The 12 Dunns of Christmas
by Ellster
Summary: Everyone is looking forward to holiday vacation and getting away from work. But work is coming after them.
1. Prologue

_Authors note: This "short" adventure is not technically part of the actual story, but rather something I came up with off the top of my head lately that ties the actual story in with the previous ones._

 _ **SPOILER ALERT:** This part includes references to the end of one of my earlier stories: "Turncoat". If you have not read that yet, I strongly recommend reading that before you start this. (I generally recommend reading them in order anyway.)_

* * *

 **Prelude** : **Down the Rabbit Hole**

"Are you sure the power is out?" Benji asked, staring with dismay at the server array in front of him. There was no doubt these computers had undergone a lot of refit by someone who either didn't care about order or didn't know better. Or who wanted to secure his job by making sure that no one else could ever find his way through the tangle of cables that connected the different components.

"Yes," Luther's annoyed voice came back over the comm. "But it's not gonna stay that way forever, so I suggest you get on with it and out of there."

"Alright," Benji sighed. He adjusted head torch to maybe have a better view at what he was doing, although he didn't have any illusions that nothing would really help him with that. Then he plunged his arms elbow deep into the chaos, and immediately pulled out his left hand again. "Aouhhhh, shit!" he exclaimed loudly.

"Benji? Are you okay?" Luther asked, worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Benji muttered, wiping the blood from his hand onto his shirt. "Just some loose casing."

"Well, what's taking so long then?" Luther replied urgently. "You only have to connect the transmitter to the mainboard."

"Oh, if it's so easy, why don't you come down here and do it yourself?" Benji asked, feeling his way through the cable forest more carefully this time.

Luther ignored the remark. "The main grid just came back on," he said instead. "Ethan says you got half a minute, max."

"Yeah, I've almost got it," Benji muttered. He had never thought he'd have to identify computer components by touch one day.

"The building's back online," Luther said.

Benji identified the right slot and stuck the transmitter onto it. Twice he slipped before it would stick.

"They're booting up the servers," Luther announced. "You got it? Benji?"

Quickly Benji pulled his hands out of the intestines on the computer, just as the fan started whirring. He winced when his hand snagged on the sharp-edged piece of casing again before he had worked it free. "Yeah, I got it," he said through clenched teeth. "Please tell me we have an uplink?"

It took a moment, then Luther sighed. "We got an uplink," he answered. "Now get the hell out of there."

"Bet you, I will," Benji muttered. Taking off the shirt that was part of his disguise as one of the companies own electricians, he wrapped it around his hand that was bleeding profusely. He kept the makeshift bandage in place by pressing it close to his chest, while he picked up his tool-bag with the other hand, dropping in his headlamp as he slung it over his shoulder.

Hastily, he left the room and almost ran down the corridor. The receptionist didn't seem to be suspicious, it took some effort to convince her that he would be fine on his own without an ambulance. He let out a sigh when he was finally through the door and started to walk the few blocks to their safe house.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"So what do we got?" Benji asked, looking at Skye, Luther and Ethan gathered behind a row of laptop screens, finishing off the round with Elaine, who was sitting next to him.

"Greetings from Nolan," Luther replied sourly.

Benji grimaced. "I can't believe we're still dealing with the aftermath of that."

"Well, if you break down a house, you still got to pick up the pieces afterward," Ethan said and shrugged.

Skye chuckled dryly. "Only in this case, the pieces have the annoying tendency to reorganize themselves."

"And?" Benji asked with a slightly tortured tone that was begging for more details.

"Well, apparently Nolan wasn't the only one fond of keeping records," Luther finally explained. "It looks like the guy who's renting this server space was working as a contractor for Nolan in Europe, shuffling money through bank accounts, specifically the Swiss kind. And he's meticulously listed each transaction and stored each communication, probably for his own blackmailing purposes, or as security against Nolan."

Ethan nodded. "Mutually assured destruction."

"Well, the good news is that I have managed to track the mail client and it belongs to one Manuel Schäfer, CEO of Solitaire Sales Solutions," Luther continued.

"Let me guess," Benji put in. "They're in the online marketing management business."

"No, they're setting up online sales platforms, officially at least. But their main affiliate for marketing is Kennedy Ltd.," Luther explained. "The thing is that as far as I can see the stuff we just got is mostly direct correspondence between them and Nolan."

"Which doesn't help us much since we already took him out," Skye finished dryly.

Ethan nodded. "What we need is something on their specific customers, preferably tying them together so we can pick them up in one big sweep."

"I'm getting to that," Luther replied with underlying annoyance. "The thing is Solitaire is under investigation for tax fraud, and all their board members are currently conveniently untraceable. Except for one Noah Thomas, who's doing time in Germany for unrelated charges. Also, there are some reports that Schäfer himself might have been seen in Oslo, but they're all unsubstantiated."

"So if we get to Thomas, he might give us the information we want," Ethan summed up.

"Or at least Schäfer's location," Luther put in more carefully. "That gives us a pretty tight schedule though. His case is going back to court after the holidays, and there seems to be a good chance that will get him out of jail."

"And then he'll just vanish like the others," Skye scoffed.

Benji grinned. "So we're going to Europe?"

"No you're not," Elaine interrupted him. She had been only half listening to the conversation while picking small shards of plastic and metal out of the gash in his hand. "You're going back home."

"But can't you just patch it up?" the techie asked miserably.

Elaine sighed. "Contrary to what you guys seem to think sometimes, I'm not a trained medical professional, much less a doctor," she elaborated dryly. "You need a surgeon, preferably a specialist. There's a ton of nerves and muscles in that hand and if either of those gets damaged you could permanently lose control of one or several of your fingers. So, no, I'm not just going to patch it up."

"Alright," Benji gave up, cringing.

"Cheer up," Luther put in. "Someone has to go through all this," he said, indicating the computer.

"And we'll need official profiles to get into that prison," Ethan added.

"Speaking of which," Skye asked. "Who's going in there?"

"Well, it's a male only prison, that makes the choice pretty simple," Luther put in.

Ethan sighed.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The front desk guard at JVA Kronach looked up with an almost bored expression when the door opened. It was late, his shift almost over, and he was one of the lucky ones who would have time off over Christmas, so this was effectively his last shift for this year.

"What you got there?" he greeted the officer who had come in, half shoving, half dragging a handcuffed prisoner. The two could not be more different. The policeman was tall and bulky, easily filling out the padded black leather jacket he wore over a green sweater from which a crumpled beige shirt collar protruded around the neck. His green cap sat slightly askew on an almost bald red-faced head with a blond moustache.

His charge was a small, athletic man with black hair and an almost smug grin. The officer was holding him tightly around the arm with both leather-gloved hands, and he was resisting just enough to keep the man annoyed.

"Daniel Ludwig. Possession and use of restricted substances," the policeman said, while the desk guard called for his colleagues. "Spent the last 24 hours sobering up in a hospital, but now he's clean he's not loony enough and the psychiatry won't keep him anymore, so now he's your problem."

"Well, happy holidays," the desk guard muttered and started filling out the paperwork.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

When Skye woke up it was dark outside. That wasn't so unusual, considering it was late December and she was in Norway. It felt a bit weird to her since she had spent the last few days in Madagascar, where it was summer right now, but she also instinctively knew it was not yet morning.

She groped for her watch in the dark, which showed it was close to 4 am. The time difference between Antananarivo and Oslo was only two hours, but apparently, it was enough to give her a jet-lag. With a sigh, she replaced the watch on the nightstand and turned around, when she heard a sound.

With a start, Skye was wide awake. Quickly she slipped out of bed and into the living room, where she stopped to listen. The sound was coming from the other bedroom, and the closer she came, the more it sounded like muffled shouting.

Carefully she opened the door. Inside it was dark, but a street lamp outside the window bathed the room in a yellowish sheen and since she hadn't switched on any lights, her eyes were still used to the relative darkness.

Swiftly she stepped into the room and quickly established that there were no intruders. The cries were coming from Elaine, who was tossing about on the bed. She had obviously managed to tie her blanket into a knot in her sleep, with her in the middle. Her legs were wrapped up tightly, her left arm wasn't even visible under the tightly wound fabric, and only her right arm protruded besides her head, but was also hopelessly tangled up, and anything she did only serve to make things worse.

"Elaine?" Skye called softly but elicited no reaction. She stepped closer and called again more loudly, but only when she managed to catch Elaine's one protruding arm, the other woman stopped thrashing around and her eyes snapped open.

Once she saw Skye, Elaine's expression changed from a frightened grimace to a look of utter horror. Holt could feel her physically shrink away, and even in the half-light of the dark room, she could see her eyes were wide with fear and her pupils so large they almost entirely covered up the irises. Her breathing was rapid, verging on hyperventilation and carried a low, whimpering sound, too silent for Skye to make out actual words.

Holt felt a shiver run down her spine, but she forced herself to stay calm. "Hey, it's me, Skye," she said, unsure if the other woman recognized her. "It's okay. You're safe. It was just a dream."

Slowly, Elaine nodded, but she kept staring back at Skye with something the other agent could only identify as fear.

Skye waited a moment to make sure Bray was entirely awake. "I'll go make tea," she then decided with a smile and headed to the door.

When Skye entered the living room a few minutes later with two steaming cups, Elaine was already there. She looked more like her usual composed self, but a shadow of whatever had haunted her nightmares still seemed to hover over her face.

"Bad dreams, huh?" Skye asked handing her one of the cups and sat down next to her.

"The usual," Elaine muttered with a blank expression. She accepted the tea with a thankful nod and took a careful sip.

Skye had had bad nights herself, especially since the last mission they had been on together, but if this was the norm for Bray, she didn't want to know how it was when things got really bad. "You want to talk about it?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. She knew the other woman wasn't really talkative and having been there herself, Skye knew how hard it could be to open up to someone who still was pretty much a stranger.

Elaine shrugged. "They kind of got very bad after the horsemen," she said quietly.

Skye nodded quietly. That mission had been particularly bad and she was sure everyone had had nightmares afterward, but she would also bet that the two of them had come out the worst. Led to believe that Elaine had turned on her team and killed several of her team members, including her own boyfriend, in cold blood, Holt had first beaten her face into a pulp and later shot her in the head with every intention of killing her. Only later she had learned that the gun had been loaded with fake bullets.

She took a long look at the other woman. The only visible reminders of that ordeal was a small, slightly oval scar right above the bridge of her nose, which seemed to be a bit flatter than before. "You know, the first night back in our flat after that, things got so bad I threw up," Skye said quietly.

Elaine shrunk back into the sofa. "I'm sorry," she muttered.

Skye gave her an apologetic smile. "It's not your fault," she said. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, we've all been there. I know it can be hard, but in my experience, talking about them can make things easier."

Elaine seemed to ponder this for a long while and Skye didn't really believe there might be an answer, when suddenly, very quietly, she said: "I've killed people."

Skye nodded. "Sometimes it's part of the job."

Elaine shook her head. "Not like that," she stated. "Back when I was with the horsemen, I helped the others kill and torture I don't know how many people. Innocent people, cops, junkies..."

She broke off and took another long sip from her tea. Skye waited for her to continue.

"Back then I denied to myself that I had anything to do with it. I didn't have a way out, so I just told myself it's not my responsibility what they're doing with my drugs," Elaine said. "But already back then I got these nightmares, faceless ghosts accusing me of their murder. After I joined IMF and admitted to what I had done, they first got worse, but I got used to them and eventually, they started to show up less often."

She swallowed. Skye could hear her voice vibrate dangerously, but she managed to keep it together. "But ever since the horsemen, they are back. Only now they have faces," Elaine continued, then her voice finally broke into a whisper. "Back then I could lie to myself because I didn't know any of these people. But the thought that I could willingly hurt anyone I know, it scares the shit out of me."

Skye nodded silently. "I felt the same," she said after a while. And when Elaine gave her an uncomprehending look, she hinted a shrug. "Believe it or not, what got to me most was that I would have killed you. Someone from my own team."

"But you thought-"

Skye didn't let her finish. "I should have trusted you," she said firmly. "But the fact that it doesn't let go of you, that's a good thing. It shows that you care about people."

Elaine grimaced and resumed staring into her now empty teacup. They sat in silence for a while which felt weirdly comfortable.

"You don't talk to people much, do you?" Skye finally asked.

"No," Elaine admitted. "I mean, Maddox sometimes comes around between missions to look after me, and Benji talked to me a lot in field training, but never this... deep."

Skye felt weirdly honored at that notion. She couldn't really understand why Elaine would connect with her of all people after what had happened, but she had to admit she was developing a liking and even a sort of protective feeling for the other agent. "What about Brandt?" she asked then.

Elaine flinched. "I think I messed that up."

Skye couldn't help raising an eyebrow. "What happened?"

"I had one of those dreams, about two weeks ago," she explained. "He was there when I woke up, and I reacted badly."

"Like tonight?" Skye asked.

Elaine grimaced. "Worse."

"Worse?" Skye asked slightly disbelievingly. "How?"

"I guess I wasn't really awake yet, and when I saw him I got really scared and basically just ran off," Elaine sighed.

"Have you talked to him?"

Skye smiled, then chuckled when she saw Elaine's frown at that. "Sorry, you just reminded me of something." She hesitated, trying to decide whether she should tell her. "When Benji and I hadn't been together that long yet, he once woke me up. I was scared, I wasn't used to someone else being there, so I caught his wrist so hard that it was bruised in the morning. I felt so embarrassed." She looked at Elaine. "But he understood. I think Brandt would understand as well. So maybe you should just talk to him," Skye suggested.

Elaine sighed. "I guess you're right."

Skye drained the cup of the last of her tea, then took both cups and headed to the kitchen. "I guess we won't be sleeping again now," she said. "Let's have breakfast."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"Com check. You read me, Watchman?"

"Loud and clear, Jailbird," the audibly disgruntled voice of Luther replied over the miniature radio Ethan had been hiding from the guards until just then. "Who's goddamn idea was it to get up so early?"

"The Germans'," Ethan replied almost cheerfully. "Just be happy I didn't get on the bakery shift or they'd have had me get up at three."

"At least you didn't have to sleep in a van," Luther grumbled back. "What's your plan now?"

"Find Thomas and give him our proposition," Ethan replied, matter of fact.

"Easy as that," Luther muttered but didn't get a reply.

The metal clonk of a key being turned in the heavy lock announced the door being opened. A guard stood outside and motioned Ethan to come out. He followed the steady stream of prisoners, all dressed in prison-issue grey sweaters and blue pants, to the mess hall, where they lined up for breakfast.

Ethan was careful to not hurt the sensibilities of anyone who was potentially higher up in the food chain, which, considering he was the new guy, was pretty much everyone. Once he had his tray with food, he looked around for his target. He was happy when he found him at an otherwise empty table.

"Is this seat taken?" he asked.

"Suit yourself," the man said, mustering him with mild curiosity.

Noah Thomas was small but lean, with an almost expressionlessly calm face. His flat dark brown hair was a little longer than in the pictures Ethan had seen.

"So, you're the new guy?" he asked after a while, chewing slowly on his cereal.

"That obvious?" Ethan asked.

Thomas shrugged. "You don't look much like an addict." Ethan raised an eyebrow and he shrugged again. "I work in the kitchen," he explained. "Heard the guards talk."

With the way the conversation was going, Ethan decided to take the risk and play with open cards. He took a quick look around to make sure none of the guards were close, then said: "Well, as it happens I'm not."

Thomas' eyes narrowed.

"I'm working for someone who's interested in information about your business partners. Specifically their unofficial work."

"I've got nothing to do with that," Thomas replied dryly. "Seriously, all I did was programming and a bit of design, basically the whole 'official' part of the business. And when I came across some weird files they framed me, which had me end up here."

Ethan mentally cursed. It was still possible Thomas was feeding him a lie, but he didn't think so. "You could still give us valuable information. Specifically where Schäfer might be hiding," he pointed out. "I'm working for powerful people. We could give you something in return."

"Could you get me out?" Thomas asked.

"I heard you had a pretty good chance of getting out soon anyway," Ethan replied with a raised eyebrow.

"My case is going back to court, yes," the other man grunted. "Only the chances aren't that good. Our evidence is largely circumstantial and the case is pretty solid. But I know something that could go a long way helping me out."

"And?" Ethan asked.

Thomas took a quick look around to make sure no one was within earshot. "I'm charged with stealing money from the people we put up online shopping platforms for, diverting one or two cents to my own bank account for each transaction taking place. The bad thing is, they got my bank records which show hundreds of these small transactions from company accounts each day over the last couple of months. I didn't even realize that was going on," he explained. "If I could get my hands on the weblogs of the pages in question and maybe the company bank records showing who set up the transfers, that would prove my innocence."

"Only if we appropriate those documents they wouldn't be admissible in court," Ethan put in.

"Don't you worry about that. I've got ways to make that work," Thomas chuckled. "The question is can you get them?"

"That depends on where they are," Ethan replied with a smile.

"Probably on the server in HQ," Thomas answered. "But it's pretty well secured and shuts down if the firewall is breached. And the backup is a standalone, so you'd have to be in the building."

"Where are your headquarters?"

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Elaine was just done washing up their dishes when Skye got off the phone. It was still as dark outside as before but had started to feel less like night and more like morning.

"Good news," the Dane said, pocketing her phone. "Benji just called. Apparently, Thomas talked, so Luther's now on his way to Reykjavik to hopefully get some intel. Also, he divulged that Schäfer often talked about an Oslo bar called _The Rabbit Hole_."

"So that's where we're going?" Elaine asked.

"Looks like it," Skye replied. They sat down together on the sofa again. "Benji also did some preliminary research on that for us. And that's the bad news: It's a nightclub. The kind that employs hardly clothed dancers."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Daylight time in Oslo was at its shortest this time of year and just under six hours long. They had used that little time to scout the surroundings of the bar and formulate their plan. It was just after eight that they were brooding over the details with Luther when Ethan chimed in on the radio conference.

"I thought it's already past your bed-time," Luther teased.

"Very funny," Hunt replied. "So, you got a plan?"

"Something like that," Luther answered. "I've had a look at their servers and from the outside while it's not impossible to get in, it's seriously hard and even with more time it would be a tough one, especially if we don't want to leave any traces, so I guess I'll have to have a look from the inside. I've got a general layout of the building, and getting in seems easy enough, but I don't know how hard it's going to be and I'd have to do it tonight."

"Why the rush?" Ethan asked a little surprised.

"Because they just reported bad weather incoming, and especially with the holidays coming up that will make getting out of this snow covered hell a lot harder after tomorrow," Luther stated.

"Well, we'll be going into the _Rabbit Hole_ tonight. If we find Schäfer there, maybe we can convince him to give us his access codes," Skye suggested. "We'll be going in as staff. It's a relatively small, exquisite establishment, so we should know pretty quickly if he's there."

"Alright, good luck," Ethan acknowledged curtly. Then crackle of his radio told them he had switched it off.

"I'd really appreciate those access codes," Luther put in when he was gone.

"If we can, we'll get them," Skye promised.

"Good," Luther replied. "And don't you kids have too much fun."

Fun was what neither woman had in mind as they made their way through nighttime Oslo. Thick snow was covering everything except a thin stripe on the sidewalk, but despite the cold, there were a lot of people around, even in the small side street the _Rabbit Hole_ was located in.

During their daytime scouting, they had found that the club had a back entrance for staff accessible from another, even smaller alleyway. Surprisingly enough this door wasn't even locked and opened into a corridor that led to the kitchen on one side and into a dressing room on the other. They slipped into the latter and changed into short blouses that were tied in the front with hardly more square footage than bikini tops, mini skirts and moderately high heeled shoes that would have them pass as waiting staff.

After storing their street clothes and coats in a corner where they were out of sight yet easily accessible, they touched up on their make-up before leaving through the door that led into the bar area.

The room was gloomily lit in hazy red. The bar ran along one short side, a stage was set up in the middle, taking up almost half of the space in the room, with small round tables scattered around it. A group of dancers was performing with tired stage smiles. It was hard to tell how much of their colorful costumes they were actually wearing and how much was painted on. Loud music was blasting from speakers next to the stage, almost drowning out the hustled conversations going on throughout the club.

No one paid any attention to them when Skye grabbed two trays with various shots that were idly standing around and seemed to be continuously stocked up by the bartender. Traversing the room, the agents could see that most, if not all of the predominantly male clientèle were considerably inebriated already and at least one person was lying under a table.

They were headed for a secluded area on a raised platform that was shielded from the rest of the room with curtains, leaving open just enough to grant a prime view onto the stage. Three burly men were sitting at a table next to the stairs leading up to the dais and gave them a very obvious look over as they passed.

Inside the curtained-off area, they indeed found Schäfer, half sitting, half lying on a couch, clearly as drunk as the rest of the patrons. Two women, dancers by their attire, were sitting next to him, while he watched the show with little interest. When the two agents entered he attempted to sit up and even looked at them with an almost focused gaze.

"Another round?" Elaine, who had entered first, proposed in accented Norwegian.

"With you, always," Schäfer responded in slurred English, with a strong German accent. He glanced at Skye for a moment, then returned his gaze to Elaine. "Where are you from, my dear?"

"Saratov," she replied with a sweet smile. "It's in Russia."

Her ruse obviously worked, his face distorted into an almost idiotic grin. "I like Russia. Good vodka," he declared. "Let's have one in private. I have a room in the back."

"But I have to work," Elaine protested, but only for show. It might be the best chance they could get.

"Ah, I don't think your boss will mind," Schäfer decided and with what looked like an enormous effort managed to push himself up from the low sofa. He staggered forward and surely would have fallen if Elaine hadn't been standing there, where he caught himself with his hands squarely on her chest. Taking a slightly more careful step backward he regained some measure of balance, then draped one arm heavily around her shoulders. With her help, he managed to get down the stairs unharmed and intoned a very much off-key version of Dschinghis Khan's _Moskau_ as they walked away.

Once they were gone the dancers vanished backstage, so Skye picked up both trays from the table and walked back towards the bar. Now she could only wait for what might happen next.

Just as she was past the curtain, a hand grabbed her around the wrist. "Hey, lady," one of the men who had been sitting at the table right beside the closed-off area called. He was alone now. "I'd like a drink in private, too."

"I'm sure you would," Skye replied, carefully setting the trays down on the table.

"I knew you'd understand me," the man cheered standing up. He was speaking English, too, but with less of an accent. Swaying heavily from side to side, he almost dragged her towards the back rooms.

Holt decided she would go along for the moment, but knock the man out as soon as they were out of sight of the bar if he didn't manage to do so himself on the way. But right after they were through the back door the suddenly much more sober man tightened the grip on her arm and shoved her face first into the wall.

"What are you doing?" she screamed, remembering to stay in character. "Let me go!"

"You can drop the act," the man said calmly. He held one of her wrists in one hand, the other arm across her neck pressing her against the wall. "No one pays attention to what happens back here. I know you're not staff. And I saw you and your friend lingering around here earlier. But she's not from around here and you're too cute for police. So who are you and what are you doing here?"

Skye didn't intend to answer. Instead, she forcefully pushed herself off the wall with her free arm, adding the strength of her legs as soon as she had enough room, then turned herself to the side, escaping the grip. She could feel the strain on the arm he still held in an iron grip, knowing she was close to dislocating something. But as soon as she was in range she swung her free fist at his neck.

Surprised by the sudden move, the man didn't manage to dodge the blow. When she hit his carotid artery just below the jawline, he dropped like a stone.

He came back around almost immediately, but the quick knock-out her blow had caused gave Skye enough time to get him into a secure hold. Sitting on his torso with her knees on his hands, she leaned over him. "Where is Schäfer?"

Quite to her surprise, the man started to laugh. "What, you're after _him_?"

"What's so funny?" she asked sternly, but he wouldn't stop laughing. Placing one hand over his throat, she forcefully dug two fingers of her other hand into his trachea just above his sternum. "What about Schäfer?"

"He's just a front," the man said, choking. "A paper figure. He's got nothing to do with the business."

"Then who's your boss?" Skye asked.

"Noah Thomas," the man relented after some more pressure.

"Thomas is in a German prison," Skye retorted.

"Yes," the man answered with a triumphant grin.

"But you're guarding something, and it's not Schäfer," she went on. "So what else is here?"

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"You know you could just..."

"I know."

"But if you bypass the..."

"I know!"

"Then you could go through the..."

"Benji, I know what I'm doing," Luther interrupted the other technician for the third time. "Now please, let me do it."

"I'm just saying," the Brit muttered.

There was silence for a while, with only the background noise of key taps, until it was suddenly interrupted.

"Our cover is blown. Schäfer's not our guy, but he's got bodyguards," Skye's breathless voice came over the radio.

"What?" three voices responded in unison.

"Elaine?" Skye asked, but there was no response. She cursed.

"What about Schäfer?" Ethan asked back, calmly.

"He's just a scapegoat. Thomas is the real guy," Skye replied.

"But he's the one who led us to Schäfer," Benji put in.

"He's playing us," Luther commented.

"But I can get to him if I get out of this cell," Ethan added. "Benji?"

"Yeah, right. I'm on it."

"So I won't get those access codes?" Luther asked with a silent sigh.

"You will, if I get to Thomas," Ethan replied. "Where's Elaine?"

"She's with Schäfer," Skye replied. "I'm trying to find her, but this place is bigger on the inside."

Suddenly there were muffled noises and a muted, high pitched scream.

"That didn't sound good," Benji remarked.

Then the cell door opened with a silent click.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

By the time they reached the right room, Elaine was half carrying Schäfer. The door wasn't locked, so they stepped right inside, while she was starting to worry how she would get any useful information out of him.

As soon as they were inside, he flopped back onto the big double bed. Elaine reached back to close the door, but before her hand found the handle, it was caught by another one. She turned around and faced two of the men that had been sitting by the curtain earlier.

She reacted quickly and threw her free hand at him in an uppercut punch, but he grabbed it before it could hit home, so she rammed her heeled foot into his stomach instead. The goons grip loosened and he staggered for a moment, but the foot was quickly followed by a fist that now held a thin-bladed metal knife.

The man collapsed to his knees, clutching his abdomen, but when he tried to get up a second time, he suddenly found the knife in his throat. He didn't get a third try.

Her hand slick with blood, Elaine's grip slipped from the handle of the knife as she tried to retrieve it and let it stick, while the second man was already coming at her through the door that was no longer blocked by his colleague. She managed to almost dodge the first blow by quickly sidestepping, so it only grazed the side of her face.

Too late she realized it had been a feint. Sharp pain flashed through the right side of her chest when she practically ran right into the knife blade.

But instead of moving away, as the man had obviously expected, she grabbed his knife hand and pulled him down. With her other hand, she reached around his head, to get him even closer, then rammed her palm into his nose.

She kept staring at the men for a moment, making sure they wouldn't get back up and catching her breath. The adrenaline rush was slowly fading and she was starting to feel nauseous. Gradually she became aware of the radio chatter in her ear.

"I'm okay," she panted. "Got into a fight."

"Stay where you are," Skye replied. "I'm almost at your position."

Elaine wondered why the other agent was coming after her but decided not to question it. She had missed what they had been talking about in the meantime.

She wiped the blood off her hands onto the little surface her skirt provided. After that she retrieved first her own knife from the dead man, then the one that was still sticking out of her ribcage just underneath the edge of her blouse, which took considerably more effort.

Schäfer was still lying on the bed, where he had watched the scene and now was gawking at her with a mostly unfocused gaze as she walked over. Elaine climbed onto the bed and knelt over him, her weight centered somewhere above his stomach. Her own knife in her left fist, just in case she had to defend herself again, she placed the blade of the larger army knife against the dazed man's throat. "Tell me your access code."

"Ass... Asssesssss..." Schäfer lisped, trying in vain to pronounce the word.

"Your access code. For the server," the agent clarified, but with much the same result. Elaine sighed, then stressed word by word: "Your computer password."

"I donnnnnnnnnnooo," the drunk man lulled, which Elaine translated into 'I don't know'.

She was about to try again, when she heard a familiar voice behind her: "Leave him, he's not worth it."

"What?" Elaine asked breathlessly, half turning around to Skye.

"He's a front. Thomas tricked us," Holt explained, walking straight to the other side of the room. She hesitated for a moment, as she passed the other agent. "You're injured."

"Just a punctured lung," Elaine remarked, still out of breath. Calmly she cleaned her knife on Schäfer's shirt, who by now seemed completely passed out. "What are you doing?"

"Just?" Skye repeated, thinking that that sentence was missing a negation. Nevertheless, she proceeded to a painting on the wall, which she removed to reveal a safe. She quickly put in the combination, all the while shooting sideways glances at Elaine.

Bray ignored the underlying question and had started to search through the closet which was the only other item of furniture in the room beside the bed. She found button-down shirts, jeans, and coats inside, which were all slightly too large, but would do under the circumstances.

Skye appropriated a second, similar set of clothes from the same closet and quickly changed, then helped Elaine into her shirt. "You should go to a hospital," she decided on seeing the cut more closely. Blood promptly seeped through the shirt, once she had it on, so she stuffed one of the tops under it to at least apply some pressure.

"We can call an ambulance once we're outside," Elaine decided. Then she curiously looked at the small package Skye slipped into her coat pocket. "What's that?"

"I don't have the slightest idea."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Carefully Ethan opened the cell door and was relieved to find the corridor outside empty. Although he hadn't found much in terms of usable weapons inside his room, he was sure he could easily knock out any guards he came across, but he was just as glad if he wouldn't have to.

"I've locked the guards in and looped the camera footage," Benji explained. "But they might notice pretty soon and I don't know what happens if they do."

"Alright," Ethan acknowledged. "Where to?"

He followed the subsequent instructions through the hallway until he reached the right door, which opened with the same tell-tale click. Quickly he stepped inside.

Noah Thomas was fast asleep on his bed and even in the dim light clearly visible. Gently Ethan pulled the door shut, careful not to make a sound, then walked towards the bed. He sat down on the edge and quickly secured the other man's wrists with one hand, placing the other over his throat, before Thomas was even completely awake.

"How...?" he started but was interrupted immediately.

"We've got agents in Oslo," Ethan stated calmly. "We know Schäfer was just a front and you tried to double bluff us."

"Oh, you're good," Thomas grinned.

"We also found your little treasure in the _Rabbit Hole_ ," the agent continued and watched Thomas' eyes narrow. "Also I got someone in your Reykjavik headquarters who has already confirmed that you were a little too careless telling us about the server there."

"Well, if you've got everything, what do you want from me then?" the man asked, but his cheerful grin had disappeared.

"Your access code," Ethan answered calmly.

"You're not going to get that," Thomas answered dryly.

Ethan closed his right hand more tightly and the other man's gaze tensed, as he started to feel the pressure. "Give me the codes or die."

"Hel..." Thomas started, but his shout was cut off when the hand around his throat tightened even more. He gasped for breath when it suddenly loosened again after a few seconds.

"Now, let's try that again."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"You got that?"

"Yes, I've got it," Luther replied testily, followed by the clattering sound of fingers on keyboard. Then the noise stopped and he whistled quietly. "Oh, yes."

"What is it?" Benji asked excitedly.

"Let's just say the analysts are probably gonna hate our guts for making them work overtime over Christmas," Luther replied with an audible grin.

"That good?" Ethan asked.

"Don't know yet, but there's certainly lots," Luther answered. "And I guess that also includes your get out of jail free card."

"Thanks," Ethan answered, then grinned. "Last to D.C. buys drinks?"

"You're on," Luther replied. "But don't complain when you lose."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The short, polite knock on the door was almost immediately followed by the same opening. "Hey," Skye called quietly. "How are you doing?"

"Feels like a hangover," Elaine commented. The last after-effects of anesthesia and strong painkillers were still visible. "And I didn't even drink."

Skye smiled. "I've handled the police, but they might come by again tomorrow to question you," she said. She had spent the last few hours feeding their cover story of having been mugged to Oslo Police officers, together with vague descriptions of their non-existent attackers.

"I'll just not remember any details," Elaine decided. "Anything else?"

"I brought you a change of clothing and a passport," Skye said holding up one of the two travel bags she was carrying, then put it down next to the bed. The other bag was hers and already tagged for her flight. She would go on to the airport right after leaving the hospital and then meet up with Ethan in Frankfurt where they both had layover on their way back to D.C. "Are you sure...?"

"I'll be fine," Elaine interrupted her. She looked incredibly tired but still managed to muster a reassuring smile. "You go and enjoy your holidays. Give my greetings to Brandt. And everyone."

"I will," Skye replied with a grin. "See you next year."

* * *

 _The actual story will be following soon. Please be patient, it's test season._


	2. Chapter 1

_So here is the actual story._

 _This story is the first complete fanfiction I ever finished, and the longest finished story I have written so far. It originally was intended as a Christmas special and a present. Since then I have worked it over to fit in the timeline that has evolved around it in the meantime and defuse the worst schachtelsatz combinations. The writing style is still a lot three-years-ago-me, but I hope you still enjoy it._

* * *

 **The Twelve Dunns of Christmas**

"Home, sweet home." A big smile on his face, Ethan took the bag from his shoulder and walked towards Luther, who had been waiting on a bench in the airport's arrival hall. He greeted his friend with a hug. "So actually managed to beat us here."

"Well, it was hard enough. And if I hadn't, I'd still be stuck on that block of ice. For at least three weeks. That's until next year!" Luther replied sourly after he had returned the hug anyway.

Ethan smiled apologetically. "I know, and I'm sorry, but if you hadn't gotten into Solitaire's server mainframe, I'd be spending Christmas in a German jail cell. And their headquarters happened to be located in Reykjavik."

"Besides you would have had an awesome white Christmas," Benji put in, while he loosened himself out of the embrace with which he had greeted his girlfriend, while gently leaving one arm on her shoulder and chivalrously taking her bag out of her hand.

Picking up his own bag, Luther snorted seemingly in dismay, but with the twinkle of a smile in his eyes: "White or not, I like my Christmas warm and dry, preferably on a tropical island."

"Anyway, how's the hand?" Ethan changed the topic, looking at Benji.

"Getting better. Quite fine by now, actually," the technician said, flexing the fingers of his left hand as if to prove it. "I'm just glad I can type with all my ten fingers again, writing with only one hand was driving me crazy. It's a shame I couldn't come to Europe with you."

"You've helped us a lot from here," Ethan reminded him, but the blond man was not quite satisfied.

"Well, yes. But it's not the same," he replied with a bit of a sad smile, but then his face brightened up again. "Anyhow, Brandt sends his regards, and as long as none of the usual disasters come in between, we're all going to have three weeks of leave as soon as we're through the whole post-mission procedure."

"Well, I know where I'll be going. Some place warm, dry, with white, sandy beaches and palm trees," Luther said with a dreamy look on his face.

Benji raised one questioning eyebrow, but after all, it was his vacation to spend. "Suit yourself. I think I'll be going to London, going home for Christmas, you know. And I had hoped that you would accompany me?" he asked, regarding the woman that was still leaning in his left arm with a loving smile.

Smiling back, Skye thanked him with a kiss on the cheek, although she had to get onto tiptoes for that. "I'd be delighted."

"Could we get on, please?" Luther asked a little more impatiently than he actually was, rolling his eyes.

Comradely Ethan slapped the taller man on the shoulder. "Cut them some slack, will you? They are in love, and they haven't seen each other in some time."

"Yeah, like five days," Luther grumbled.

Benji ignored them completely took a last look into those lovely, deep brown eyes before he drew away his arm to reach for the key in the pocket of his jacket. A moment later a silver IMF issue BMW was happily blinking at them from a little further down the street. "By the way, Ethan," Benji said, as he swung into the driver's seat. "I believe your wife is planing to take you skiing in the Alps. But you don't know that from me."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"And, here we are," Benji said, opening the door to what would be their apartment for the next three weeks. It had taken him time and nerves to get the flat for their vacation, but as currently there was no active operation in London, he had gotten permission for them to use it. Apart from Benji's persistence in asking, this was in no small part due to their performance in the last missions, and the extra time he had spend arguing about this with the paper-pushers was well worth it, considering its location in the middle of the city between Charing Cross, Covent Garden and Leicester Square, yet in a rather quiet side road, and the fact that it was spacious, nicely furnished and included internet access. That they didn't have to pay for it was an extra bonus, although unnecessary, since the IMF paid them more than well.

"Very nice," Skye smiled, taking in the room. The apartment was neither in a safe-house, nor a safe-room itself and therefore it wasn't protected by an identity lock, but could be opened with a key. It was a simple flat, used for observation, as a base of operations or as a place to live for agents awaiting extraction or new orders. However, like all IMF properties, it could also serve as an emergency hideout and was furnished accordingly: The closets in the two bedrooms, one with a double bed, one with two single beds, held an assortment of clothes for both male and female agents, with fitting outfits for different occasions, and in all possible sizes. The kitchen cupboards were well stocked with canned food and ready-made meals, as well as soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and, a specialty of English locations, a wide variety of tea. The furniture in the main room consisted mainly of broad, draw-out sofas with the obvious function to double as beds if necessary, yet nicely accompanied by low tea-tables. In an emergency situation, more than ten agents could comfortably hide here for several months.

Of course there were also secret lockers storing IMF-issue tech, weapons and ammunition, hidden behind wall panels, cupboards and the occasional painting on the wall, but those, as well as the up-link to the IMF network, were secured with palm-print, voice and retina-scan and code locks, and an agent had first to identify himself by at least two of those methods, depending on which of them where implemented, before access was granted.

Skye knew where all those secret lockers were, or at least she could have taken a very good guess. The architecture of IMF hideouts did not differ that much from one to the other and there were rather few spots where something could be hidden. However she sincerely hoped she would not need that knowledge, although they were staying in an IMF apartment, they were on vacation after all.

While she was inspecting the apartment, Benji had been rummaging around in the kitchen cupboards and obviously was not satisfied with their contents. "What do you say?" he asked, coming back into the living room. "While you get comfortable, I'll go out and get us some supplies. Do you need anything special?" he went on when she nodded and got his jacket from behind one of the sofas, where they had dropped their luggage.

With a smile, Skye let herself sink into the soft cushions. "Chocolate maybe?" she said. "I've been craving Maltesers ever since we landed." She had thought about going with him, but although not in this particular apartment, she had been to London a few times before and knew the central parts well enough already. The city could wait until later or even tomorrow.

"Alright," Benji replied and slipped into his jacket. He stopped by the sofa where she was sitting and carefully bent down to gently kiss her goodbye on the forehead. The height difference between them was already great enough when she was standing up, but now that she was sitting on the low sofa, he just didn't want to get all the way down to her cheek.

However, Skye didn't want to let him go like that. Looking up until his dark blue gaze locked with hers, she softly wrapped her arms around his neck, until her lips met the soft familiar warmth of his. It was not a very intense kiss, nor a long one, but one that held the promise of more.

"I won't be long," he promised, stealing himself out of her embrace.

Skye smiled back. "I know."

With a comfortable sigh, she stretched out on the sofa as the door closed behind him. She didn't mind staying behind, even after they hadn't seen for a while. They would have the next three weeks together, twenty-one days with no missions. Lots of time with nothing to do. Lots of time with nothing to worry about, only peace and quiet. And lots of time for all those little things one never got to in everyday life, especially not as an IMF agent. Things like reading a book.

Still, even now she could not quite let herself be carried away by the story. She had only just started with page three when something drew her attention away from the book. It was a noise she hadn't been able to identify, but by the time she realized that everything was already quiet again.

Silently she scolded herself for being so jumpy. She was an experienced field agent, there was little ordinary life could throw at her that she wouldn't be able to handle. Besides she was on vacation, there was no reason she should have to expect any trouble.

Skye forced herself to concentrate back on her reading, however, she couldn't really relax and as soon as her ears picked up the slightest sound, the words started to swim before her eyes.

It was the snap of a door-lock, she realized and tried to calm down. It could have come from any of the surrounding flats. And even if it had come from her door, the only one who could come in was Benji. Yet she sat up, tense and waiting, staring blankly at the pages in front of her, at words that did no longer have any meaning as her mind was now completely focused on the door. Skye let out a sigh of relief when the door opened and a familiar blond head peeked in.

"That was quick," she greeted her boyfriend with a hint of mock-challenge in her voice and put her book aside on the table. She wouldn't be able to get much further now anyway. Despite the sofa being quite low, she managed to stand up elegantly, and crossed the room in few long strides, until she stood right in front of him. "Did you forget something?"

"Oh. Uh, yes," the blond man replied, looking at her as if he had only noticed her just then. But although he was now looking at Skye, his look still had a somewhat absent-minded quality, and it felt as if he was actually looking through her, sweeping the room with his eyes, scanning, searching, for what?

Holt decided that she had to draw his focus back to what was important. Rising onto tiptoes, she softly placed her hands on his shoulders, her forearms carefully steadying her against his chest. Gently she reached up with her head to place a swift kiss onto his cheek, but even before her skin met his, she knew that there was something _wrong_.

"I wish you hadn't done that," said Benji's voice as that of another man. His handsome face was distorted by a sad, sarcastic smile that looked displaced on his usually bright features. Instinctively Skye shrank back, but by the time her mind had managed to catch up with the situation, her wrists were already caught in the talon-like clasp of his hands. She was still up on tiptoes, so her struggle threw her off balance and she stumbled against the low table.

The man hadn't anticipated the force of her resistance, and so they both toppled down, throwing the table onto its side and sending everything on it flying to the floor. After the short fight, Skye found herself in an even worse position than before. The goon had ended up on top of her, and she felt as if she was suffocating from the stench of his aftershave. Her legs were trapped underneath his knees, her wrists still caught in his unyielding grip and he had made sure to keep his hands out of the range of her teeth and fingernails. Yet it was more of a stalemate, for to stand up he would either have to let go of one of her hands to secure her ankles or give her legs free. Somewhat reluctantly, Holt stopped struggling.

"Good," said the man with a cold, satisfied grin that, in combination with her partner's face made the agent sick.

She responded with a look of pure hatred but forced herself to ease the tension in her muscles, to give in. Or at least to let it seem that way. It only made his grin broader, and Skye wanted to throw up.

"Alright, sweetheart. I'm going to stand up now," he said, and she could almost feel the layer of grime he added to Benji's voice. "Don't try anything stupid, or you're going to regret it."

Holt didn't feel the need to show in any way that she had understood or even heard what he had said, but obviously the goon didn't expect her to, for a moment later she felt the weight lift off her legs and the warm, tingling sensation of blood returning into her toes. Perched on his haunches, half over her, half next to her, he tightened his grip around her wrists. His fingernails painfully dug into her skin, as the man forcefully pulled her up.

Skye didn't wait until she had a secure stand. As soon as she could move her legs freely, she pushed up her right knee, ramming it into his stomach. The painful cough that followed told her that she had hit home, and the fingers around her wrists loosened slightly. Pushing herself off the floor with her left leg, Skye managed to place both of her feet against his chest and kicked hard. The force of her kick, combined with gravity, enabled her to at least free her right wrist, before her opponent's grip tightened again and a 180° mid-air barrel-roll saved her spine from crashing into the edge of the table.

The goon was only stunned for a moment, and by the time Holt hit the ground, his grip around her left arm was so tight again, she almost feared something might break. If it hadn't been clear before, it definitely was now that she had practically no chance of escape. However, she had managed to buy herself a second of time. Enough time to reach for the phone, which had gone unnoticed on the floor underneath the sofa, and shielded from the intruder's view by the furniture.

Skye just managed to activate the screen and push the 'emergency call'-button next to the input field for the unlock code, before the man seized her right arm, too, forcing her into a police-style arm-lock. He pulled her onto her knees, securing her legs with one foot that painfully bent her ankles, then rearranged her arms, so he could comfortably hold them with one hand.

Furiously Holt tried to find a way out, when she heard him rummaging in his pocket and then the short, sickening plop of a syringe being uncapped. With a last desperate effort, she tried to rip herself free, but before she could succeed, she already felt the sharp pierce of an injection in her neck.

She tried to fight but knew her chances were dwindling as she felt her strength being drained from her muscles. The world around her started turning sickeningly and Agent Holt knew that now she could only hope that the connection was still active and that someone would notice her call when everything faded to black.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

With a sigh of contempt, Luther set down the paper-cup of overpriced, but at least somewhat good airport-coffee next to his laptop computer. While he had been getting his coffee, his computer had booted up, so he was now ready to work. He didn't mind the little distraction, even though he was on leave, in fact, he actually welcomed it. There was not much he could do, being stuck for the next two hours in Paris of all places, while he was waiting for his connecting flight. Not that it was much of an effort for him to hack into the airport's relatively insecure Wi-Fi network, but it was always good to stay in training. Besides for him, it was the easiest and quickest way to gain internet access.

Of course there were other, more legal ways to achieve that, too, and usually, Luther wouldn't have bothered to hold himself up with this child's play, but he really wanted to know what was the deal with the message his phone had received right after he had come off the plane. And for that, he needed to get into the IMF database, which in the airport he could only do over the worldwide web. The message had been a computer-generated compilation of letters and numbers, the pattern of which looked like what happened when someone sent an encrypted message on a channel that did not exist, or not anymore. Of course, this could have been a mistake, those happened even in the IMF, but the fact that the message had turned up on Luther's phone suggested that there was someone in trouble.

If that was the case, then time was of the essence, which was why he wanted to find out who sent it and why, as quickly as possible. Impatiently the agent drummed his fingers on the café table, while the network was loading, and tried to push away the increasingly grim scenarios that were involuntarily generated by his mind. Once he was past the identification screen, his fingers were on autopilot, navigating through the database. He knew what he was looking for and where to find it, so it didn't take him long until he found the data that was subject of his search. When he had, he took a second, just to lean back and stare. "You got to be kidding me," he murmured subconsciously, reaching for his phone.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Benji had first noticed the man as he was crossing Leicester Square towards Oxford Street. Back then he had ignored the man in the long, black coat, scolding himself for his paranoia, but by now he was sure that there was someone following him. Even in the busy shopping-lane of Oxford Street, where the thickness of the crowd seemed to be amplified by the approaching Christmas time, every time he turned around, the man was behind him, even inside shops. Of course, there always remained a little bit of doubt that, maybe, he was only imagining it, interpreting something. But if he did have a shadow, the last thing he wanted to do was to drag him back to the flat. And as he had no backup he could call for help, there was only one way to get rid of him.

As soon as the next chance came up, he went into a small alleyway, but instead of walking it all the way down, he stopped a few paces in and turned around to see whoever would follow behind him, without being seen from the broad street. If he really had a tail, the man would have to follow him sooner or later or risk losing his trace.

For a moment it occurred to him that he was completely unarmed, but then again he was on leave and most likely there would be a good, easy explanation for all of this. Besides, there also was a good chance that there was no one following him at all, and so he was making himself comfortable. He expected it to be a rather long and pointless wait, but soon after he had entered the small street, the man in the black coat suddenly stood right in front of him.

"Looking for something?" Benji asked overly friendly, leaning against a wall, arms crossed. His tail was about 5'8'', thin, pale, with short dark red hair and his hands hidden in the pockets of his long coat, and seemed only slightly surprised and not overly shocked at being discovered. In fact, he was quite calm, maybe a little too calm, the agent thought, and the idea made him shiver.

"You are more intelligent than might be good for you, Mr. Dunn," said the man with a predator-like smile that made Benji's skin itch. With triumphant eyes, he nodded at something behind the blond man. "Too bad for you."

With a slight feeling of panic rising inside him, Benji noticed the sound of heavy footsteps approaching from the other end of the alleyway. Although he knew he probably shouldn't, he couldn't resist turning around and saw three more men coming at him from the far end of the street. They were dressed equally dark as their leader, however somewhat more impressive in size and build.

Although they were still at the opposite corner, he could see their half-drawn guns underneath their open jackets. The long distance between them and him wouldn't help him much, especially as behind him he heard the typical clicking noise of a demonstratively loaded gun, and the man's voice saying: "Please don't try to do anything smart, I don't want to be the one who has to clean up the pieces."

In retrospect, what Benji did then was anything but smart, however, in his defense, he hadn't had time to think about it properly. Turning on the spot, he took a long swing with his right and smashed it straight into the man's face. With a tiny bit of satisfaction, he felt something underneath his knuckles break, but he didn't look back to see the damage he had done. The bellowing sound of gunshots echoed through the alley behind him, as he raced out onto the business-street. But he didn't care, he simply ran.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"And did I mention Brandt has a girlfriend now?" Ethan asked rhetorically.

The woman sitting across from him laughed, and he watched, absentmindedly twirling the spaghetti around his fork. She had a beautiful laugh, light and melodic, lighting up her shining eyes and making the soft, brown fringe at the edge of her face shake. "Really?" she asked back in between laughs. "I always thought he's married to his work."

"Hard to believe, isn't it?" he smiled back dreamily. Moments like this were what made it all worthwhile. Being away for weeks, even months, it didn't matter as long as he could come back to see Julia smile and hear her laugh at his stories, and he enjoyed every moment of it.

Until his phone rang. It was not a shrill ring-tone, nor very loud, and he might easily have overheard the low hum, but the fact was that he hadn't. Scolding himself for not having put it on silent, he pulled it out, ready to push away whoever was calling. But when he saw who it was, he thought again. It was not IMF headquarters, but Luther, and as they all were on leave he wouldn't be calling if it wasn't important. With a sigh and an apologizing glance to Julia, he accepted. "Yes?"

"Ethan?" Luther asked, yet didn't wait for the other agent's confirmation, but came right to the point: "We've got a situation."

So much for vacation, Ethan thought, but calmly, yet curtly, asked: "What kind?"

"Holt used the panic button," Luther replied. Involuntarily Ethan raised an eyebrow. As far as he knew, Skye was supposed to be with Benji, so if something had happened to her, whatever it was most likely had happened to him, too. However, they both were well trained and experienced agents and on vacation, so he couldn't imagine what would make them do something as desperate as this. Surely this had to be a mistake. "Have you tried to call her?"

"Yes, and Benji, too. But I haven't been able to reach either of them," Luther said and there was an edge of worry in his voice. Someone else might have missed it, but it instantly projected onto Ethan. He tried to hide it from Julia, but his wife knew him far too well to miss the minute changes in his expression.

"I've called headquarters," Luther went on when Ethan remained silent. "Hunley said we are the only free agents in the area. He can organize us some backup, but all of that takes time, so he'd rather we find out what's going on before he'll send in the cavalry. I haven't reached Brandt yet, but I'll keep trying. I've got a hunch he might join the party."

"Alright," Ethan acknowledged and nodded slightly. He sincerely hoped, Luther would be successful. Although the Chief Analyst had decided to more or less stick to his desk job, he still retained the qualities of a top agent, something that was often overlooked. Should they encounter any trouble, it would make their job somewhat easier to have him around. "I'll see you there," he ended the conversation before he hung up and turned back to Julia.

"I know I promised..." he started, but she interrupted him.

"A mission?" she asked and there was neither disappointment nor accusation in her voice, only genuine interest.

He shook his head. "No, it's an emergency," he explained, knowing that she would understand. "We don't know what's going on. It might be nothing, but we can't be sure until we've had a look."

"Then you should go," she said softly, and steadily met his gaze. They both knew that neither of them would be sleeping well if he didn't.

As he stood up, Ethan took the few steps around the table and softly kissed her good-bye. It was on occasions like this that he knew he had married the best wife he could possibly have. "I'll be back as soon as I can," he said.

"Just make sure you all come back in one piece," she replied, her voice hardly above a whisper now. The concern stood visibly in her eyes and it did little when she jokingly added: "I've got three weeks of vacation and I'd like to keep it that way."

"I will," Ethan promised with a confident smile, although they both knew that this was a promise he might not be able to keep.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

At least the goons didn't want to cause any civilian casualties, Benji thought as he was making his way down Oxford Street. The sound of gunshots ceased, as soon as he was out of the alleyway and into the crowded street, however they were still on his heels. Any illusion that it might not be so, was instantly destroyed by the agitated shouts of shoppers behind him. And surely they were catching up. Riding in Benji's wake, they had an easier time getting on than the agent, who had to fight his way through the dense crowd.

Benji tried not to think about that as he forced his way through the mass of people, with the use of elbows, when necessary. In front of him, men and women were jumping out of the way, pulling aside dogs and children as he ran past, alternately shouting "Excuse me!" and "I'm sorry!". He knew that he had virtually no chance of escaping them. If he stayed on Oxford street they would eventually catch up with him, that was only a matter of time. But if he turned into one of the smaller side-streets again he would be shot as soon as they would reach the corner of the street, and he couldn't be sure they wouldn't shoot to kill.

He was just thinking that it most likely would be better to be captured alive than to be shot dead when he suddenly saw his chance for escape, which came in the shape of a road-sign. It was the sign of Oxford Circus underground station that was looming over the crowd as if someone had put it there just for him. Taking two steps at once, he raced down the stairs, where the crowd was gradually getting lighter. That of course not only helped him but also his pursuers, whose steps he could already hear at the top before he had cleared the staircase. As he didn't want to give them the chance to get a clear target on him, Benji took the last of the steps in one leap and didn't slow down one bit as he ran straight for the trains. He didn't bother to pull out his ticket and simply jumped over the gates, much to the dislike of the station staff, but that was something he didn't care about just then. He didn't even consider taking the escalator as it was meant to, instead he used his forward momentum to get onto the middle part between the two stairs, turning it into a slide.

During his rather uncontrolled ride, Benji was gathering a little more speed than he was comfortable with, however, he did not try to break his fast descend, especially not when someone started to shoot at him from the top of the escalators. The agent tried to make himself as small a target as possible and when he reached the end of the slide, he lunged forward in a move that under other circumstances he would have called insane, which was followed by a roll that carried him sideways into the cover of the next corridor. Not trusting the quiet that evolved shortly afterward, he instantly got up again and fell back into his run right away, ignoring the bruised parts of his body that were protesting about his crazy stunt.

The corridor, of course, led onto a platform where, much to Benji's delight, a train was just waiting, ready to depart. The doors-closing alert was already bleeping when he literally jumped through the doors that snapped shut behind him. Breathing heavily, he looked around. He could see the smaller, brown haired man inside the corridor he had come out of, as the train rushed out of the station. With a sigh of relief, the technician stiffly sunk into a seat, and waited for his pulse to normalize as the train cart raced through the tunnels underneath the city. He did not notice the phone that was silently buzzing in his pocket.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The knock on the door sounded practiced, short and polite, just loud enough to be heard, but not so much it would be intruding. "Come in," a voice called from inside and Brandt opened the door.

In the crisp light of a clear Oslo winter sky filtering in through the window, Elaine was sitting up in the hospital bed, dressed in a loose-fitting blue sweater. The blanket was spread over her legs, on it a book lay open in her lap. She was looking good, Brandt thought, but still the IV in her left arm, the drain bottles hanging next to the bed and the fact that she was leaning back heavily against the almost vertical headrest pointed to the contrary on closer inspection.

"Hi," he greeted her, closing the door. Slightly awkwardly he placed a vase with flowers and a box of chocolates on her nightstand. "How are you doing?"

"Alright so far," she replied with a relatively broad smile. "Wasn't expecting visitors."

Brandt pulled a chair closer and shrugged. "Well, what else am I gonna do with my vacation?"

Elaine chuckled. "Don't know? Vacation maybe?"

"Yeah, right," Brandt muttered and sat down. They sat in silence for a while, looking at each other unsure what to say.

Elaine was thoughtfully chewing her lip. "I'm sorry I took off like that," she finally said. "I know it was only a nightmare, but I freaked out and overreacted."

Brandt nodded compassionately. "It's okay. I mean I know how it is," he said haltingly. He knew he had surprised her, but now she had thrown him into the deep end. "They can be pretty scary. If you want to talk about it..."

"Not right now," Elaine admitted. "I just wanted to tell you. And, well..."

She broke off, not really knowing what to say. Or rather how to say what she wanted to say. Finally, she simply shifted slightly more towards him on the bed, reached one arm around his head and gently pulled him into a kiss.

She drew away again almost as soon as their lips had touched. Brandt felt confused and surprised but in a very positive way. He looked at her for a long second, her watery gray eyes mirroring the silent apology. Then he just kissed her back.

He was very careful, aware of her injuries, but after not seeing her for over two weeks, every kiss felt like a secret stolen moment and very satisfying. Until his phone rang.

With a sigh, Brandt sat up straight and fished it out of his coat pocket.

"I thought you have vacation?" Elaine chided.

"So did I," he muttered, then raised an eyebrow in surprise. "It's Luther."

Elaine looked at him expectantly, while he accepted the call.

"Yes?" he answered. There was a long pause, and his face grew dark. "Have you...? Alright... I'll be there."

"What's going on?" Elaine asked when he put down the phone after hardly a minute.

"I don't know. But Benji and Skye might be in trouble," Brandt answered with a deep frown.

"Then what are you still doing here?" Elaine replied.

Brandt smiled both in apology and thanks. "See you later," he said and on a hunch bent down to softly kiss her on the forehead, before he left.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The train Benji was on was one of the Victoria line, northbound to Walthamstow. The most practical thing to do would most likely have been to get off at King's Cross / St. Pancras and from there take another train back to somewhere near the flat, however he didn't feel like walking through crowds with lots of people again, and so he stayed put as the train passed through the big station and waited for the smaller ones. Also, he didn't want to go back the way he had come.

Of course, the chance that his attackers were still around was small, but for Benji the possibility alone that at least one of them might be standing at Oxford Circus, waiting for him to return was enough. So he went up as far as Finsbury Park, where he changed trains to a southbound Piccadilly line service that would take him back to Leicester Square.

The adrenaline rush the chase had caused, slowly subsided, and he was quite calm again when he left the station at Leicester Square, through the ticket gates this time, like every other passenger. From the station, it was not far to the flat, and he was already hoping for a warm tea with a drop of Scotch and maybe an explanation for all this when a car came out of a side-street right in front of him. It was his subconscious that identified the black Mercedes with the peculiar scratch right above the left front tire and so he instinctively dived behind the advertisement board that stood on the sidewalk in front of a shop. Feverishly he thought about just where he had seen that car before, while bullets peppered the front of the board.

A moment later the salvo was followed by the sound of screeching tires, accompanied by a choir of honking car horns. When he carefully peered over the rim of his barricade, he saw that his pursuers had tried to do a not quite legal U-turn in the middle of the street, which had gotten them tangled up between a couple of other cars. Spotting his chance, Benji left his hiding place, and for the second time that day, he ran. In the chaos on the street, he went right across the road and onto Leicester Square, hoping he might be able to lose them there. However the driver did not only manage to somehow get out of the knot he had created, he also followed him onto the square. Of course, he didn't care that he actually wasn't allowed to.

Desperately Benji ran, ducking left and right into alleyways to evade his pursuers, but he wasn't able to shake them and soon ran out of small side-streets to hide in. So when he finally ended up on the corner of Pall Mall and Northumberland Avenue, that he was still alive was solely due to a lot of luck and the fact that shooting at a moving target from a moving car was somewhat harder than it looked in the movies, and now he was on a wide open street. Of course, he could have headed over Trafalgar Square and back into the small roads, but that hadn't worked the first time and he felt that his reserves were slowly used up. He needed another option, and he needed it quickly.

Desperate, the agent looked around for a bike, a scooter, anything that would give him the speed he needed to escape the car, and he almost didn't believe his luck when he saw what right then seemed to be a gift from heaven: A mail van was parked at the side of the street, keys in the ignition, while the postman had obviously gone inside one of the houses. Without thinking twice, Benji climbed into the driver's seat and started the small red truck. By then the Mercedes was level with the van's rear so that when Benji hit the gas, he pulled the van sharply to the right and shoved the black car right into the oncoming traffic.

In the rear-view mirror, he could see the Mercedes being hit right on by an Audi that came from the opposite direction. Both drivers managed to veer sideways, so it was not exactly a head-on collision, but it was enough to send them sliding sideways until both cars were stopped by a lamp post. Relieved, Benji let out the breath he hadn't noticed he'd been holding up to then, but left his foot on the gas, switching gears as he sped down the street towards the Thames. He knew that he couldn't be sure that his pursuers were as knocked out as their car, and sure enough, a moment later three men were climbing out of the car and pointing their guns at him. It was only a few meters to the crossroad and the agent had hoped that he would get there, take a straight left and with that move out of their range before they were ready to shoot.

But then, a delivery van of the Royal Mail was not a Ferrari, and although with the road sloping downwards towards the river it was picking up speed fast, Benji could hear the sharp clang of bullets hitting the metal rear of his vehicle. He flinched when one of them shattered his left mirror, but thanks to the closed cargo department, he didn't have to duck. Therefore he had a clear view out of the windshield and managed to just miss the biker who would otherwise have unpleasantly come into contact with his radiator grill. This brought him a little more to the right than he had wanted to get, but when Benji wanted to pull the van sharply to the left, the clang of bullets was joined by a strange exploding sound accompanied by a sharp hiss. At the same moment, he could feel the van suddenly sagging to the right. The agent desperately fought to somehow retain control of his car, but between his originally initiated steering left and the shot right rear tire dragging him to the other side, the inertia pushed the van further straight ahead.

The only problem was that, while there was a street going left and one going right, there was none up ahead. Stepping on the break, Benji furiously tried to stay on the street. As going left seemed to no longer be an option, he instead steered right, but all that happened was that the van was now sliding sideways instead of straight ahead, but still in the direction of the river. Orchestrated by the screeching of tires on wet asphalt and the honking of car horns, the van unsteadily slithered onto the sidewalk. For a moment the agent hoped, he might be stopped by the low wall that was designed to keep pedestrians from falling down onto the pier, however, several tons of mass together with the speed the car still had gave the vehicle enough momentum to carry it over the stone parapet.

As the van toppled over, Benji instinctively hid his head between his arms, still tightly clutching the wheel for lack of something better to hold onto. He got painfully aware that he had not had the time to fasten his seat-belt, especially in the short moment his back came into contact with the cabin roof when the van hit the ground. But before he could even worry about what he might have injured, the vehicle rolled over and he looked at something he was more familiar with than he liked: The view of a black, watery surface rapidly moving in his direction.


	5. Chapter 4

_Thanks for the review. Here you go._

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

"Anything new?" Ethan greeted the others, climbing out of the rain into the back of the car.

Luther, sitting opposite of him on the other bench of the small transporter, shook his head. "No. There's only one camera in the hallway of that house, and I've been through the footage. They went in the flat, then Benji left and came back a few minutes later, all within twenty minutes before the message, and that's all that has happened in that staircase for weeks. I still have no response from either of them, but the message definitely came from Skye's phone which was in that flat and hasn't moved since."

"Did you trace Benji's phone?" Brandt asked from the driver's seat. The analyst's level of information most likely was about his own, Ethan thought.

"I've tried," Luther replied with a grimace. "But not much luck there. I've put a constant trace on it, but most of the time it has been off the grid, either turned off or maybe somewhere deep underground. The few pings I got were so short that I could only narrow its position down to somewhere around the city and the last ping is about two hours old by now anyway."

Meanwhile, Ethan checked the contents of the small bag of equipment Brandt had brought from an Oslo safe house thanks to his diplomatic passport. It had originally contained a set of radio equipment, guns, holsters and plenty of ammunition, in addition to which Luther, who had arrived an hour before the other two agents, had not only organized their ride, but also a key to the flat and genuine looking Met-detective-IDs, just in case. As the others had already armed themselves, the bag was nearly empty when Ethan helped himself to the remaining pieces, silently listening.

"I don't like this," Brandt muttered, impatiently drumming his fingers on the wheel. Not only was he finally stuck in London's famous traffic, now he was also held up because in front of him the road was blocked by ambulance and police cars surrounding a crane that was heaving a large red van out of the river.

"Shit," Luther cursed quietly when he saw the chaos on the street, peeking through the gap between the front seats. "This could take a while. Probably another hour or two."

"Time we don't have," Brandt decided, and, following the example of a few other drivers, took a sharp U-turn, accompanied by loud honking around them. The main streets around the blocked crossroad were as busy, as was to be expected under the circumstances, so as soon as possible he turned into the maze of smaller side streets. Through that, they were unexpectedly quick and reached flat within a few minutes.

All the while Luther had had an eye on the camera in the hallway, which he had linked to his phone. As they left the van, he checked it a last time. "No change," he announced and pocketed his phone.

The house that held the IMF apartment was located in the middle of the street. Six stories tall, it was a little smaller than the surrounding structures and also not quite as broad as the other buildings. Balconies looming over the street were indicating that there were flats on every level, the one in question was taking up the whole first floor.

Guns at the ready, the agents entered the front door and rapidly proceeded to the first floor. Brandt and Luther took positions on either side of the door, while Ethan opened it. Quickly they moved in, securing in all possible directions, but the room was empty. While Brandt moved towards the kitchen, Luther headed for the outer one of the bedrooms, leaving the middle room for Ethan who had come in last and therefore was still nearest to the door, when someone suddenly came out of exactly that room.

"Whoa!" the man exclaimed and instinctively raised his hands at the sight of three guns pointed at him. However Luther already lowered his weapon with a sigh of relief, and the others followed suit, stepping back to give him the space to get out of the bedroom. "Benji, are you alright?"

"Yeah. Why shouldn't I?" the blond man replied with an ironic laugh, carefully bringing his arms into a more comfortable position as he stepped into the living room. Meanwhile, Brandt had a look into the other rooms, just to be sure, but they were as empty as the large room had been when they had first come in, which made him think of something else. "Where is Agent Holt?"

The other man shrugged. "Don't know, went out a while ago, hasn't come back yet," he said, while Ethan let his look wander around the room. The flat looked perfectly normal, except for the book maybe that was lying on the floor next to one of the low tables, but that was nothing out of the ordinary enough to make something of it. However, somehow his eyes were drawn back to the blond man in the middle. He couldn't quite tell what, but something was wrong, very wrong. Without warning he raised his gun, asking in an icy voice: "Who are you?"

"Ethan, what are you doing?" Luther asked with a little surprise, not sure what to do, while the accused rather reflexively took a step back, in the process hitting his head on a low hanging lamp.

"I'm pretty sure I'm me," he stammered, trying to regain his balance.

"Nice try," Ethan replied dryly with a voice like liquid nitrogen. Not moving a muscle he stood there, his eyes fixed coldly on his target, his aim locked in, yet at the same time, he seemed to be completely relaxed. The same self-assuredness that he showed in his stance underlying his voice, he said: "You are not Benjamin Dunn."

"What are you talking about?" the other man asked, taking another step back, now standing between Luther and Brandt who still had their guns drawn, but not raised, looking at them for help.

"Ethan?" Brandt now asked for an explanation. Still not moving one inch from his position Ethan was about to reply when a reflection of light caught his eye and he pulled the trigger.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Benji was cold, wet and generally miserable as he turned into the street where the flat was located. He had been lucky that the van's windshield had been shattered when it had crashed onto the pier so that it had been pushed inwards when the car had impacted on the water and he had managed to get out relatively easily. But as he had not wanted to be seen by anyone, he hadn't managed to find a spot to get out of the water until after Westminster, so he had not only had to walk around the parliament but also the whole way back up Victoria Embankment. However, he had turned away from the river as soon as he saw the crane still at work. He didn't want to risk being recognized by anyone, not the way his luck was working today.

In the meantime, the slight drizzle of the morning had turned into a full-grown rain, so at least nobody would take further notice of a dripping wet man walking through the city. Not that there were a lot of people who would have noticed him at all. Once it had started raining the streets had been surprisingly empty, and so he had had a lot of time to think.

That way he had also remembered where he had seen the black Mercedes before. It had been parked right across the street from the flat when they had arrived. He had noticed it back then because of the peculiar scratch. Cold shivers ran down his back when he thought about the possibility that they had been watched all along, and not just because of the water.

Now that he was walking back, the Mercedes, of course, was not there anymore. In fact, the whole street was empty except for a dark blue van that had taken the place of the black car. It was a minibus, a family-car kind of vehicle, and rented by the looks of it.

Benji didn't give it a second look as he hurried across the street into the dry hallway of the house. All he cared about right now, was a warm shower, a dry set of clothes and a hot cup of tea, that might save him from the cold he surely had caught in the last two hours, and hopefully an explanation for what had happened. Maybe Skye would have an idea. His mind firmly set on that, he reached the top of the stairs, when his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a gunshot, coming from the direction of his flat.

Triggered by this sound, his mind switched to autopilot. Without thinking he kicked in the door, just in time to have a dead body hit the ground right at his feet with a sickening thud.

Benji froze. He had seen quite a few dead bodies in his time with the IMF and even more since he had become a field agent. Some of them had been pretty gruesome, actually enough so that the view of a corpse in itself was not so much disturbing to him anymore. However it was not really surprising that he was somewhat shocked at the sight of his own face staring up at him from the floor with cold, dead eyes, a dark reddish circle forming around a rip in his shirt, indicating a clean shot in the chest, and the man he would most likely have called his best friend standing over the body with literally a smoking gun.

"What the hell...?" he started, at least an octave about his usual pitch, but he didn't manage to finish the question when his voice broke into pieces. He was only peripherally aware of the three guns that were now pointed at him, and actually, he didn't care. He simply couldn't stop staring at the face that was a perfect recreation of his own, so much it seemed even more perfect than the original, with the one small flaw that it was dead.

Benji was so overwhelmed by the situation that it didn't even occur to him to raise his hands or to move in any other way. The sight seemed to glue him to the spot, even his thoughts felt as if his brain was suddenly made of chewing gum.

Meanwhile, Ethan had been closely looking over the dripping figure that had burst so suddenly into the room, but soon enough he was sure. "He's Benji," he declared, and put away his gun, Brandt and Luther following his example, at least one of them with a sigh of relief.

This time there was no other possibility. Not only had he found the small, but distinct red line crossing the back of the technician's left hand, the remainder of his latest injury and a reminder of a previous mission, also Ethan was sure that no mask would have ever been able to withstand as much water as his hair and clothes seemed to have absorbed.

"Oh, good," was all that Benji himself could say to that, not able to take his eyes off the impostor. Only when Luther finally ripped the mask off the dead man's face did he slowly get out of his shock.

"Whatever happened to you?" Brandt asked, handing a towel to the blond man, who was still understandably shocked, but at least recovering enough to tell them of his adventures of the day.

Benji reported every detail he thought important, from the time he had first spotted his pursuers to the small car chase in the end. A little incoherent at first, his report grew increasingly ordered as he slowly calmed down.

"Basically it ended with me taking a dive in the Thames in a Royal Mail van," he finished, trying to rub the water out of his ears. However as the towel had long ago lost his usefulness due to the sheer amount of water, this try was condemned to fail. Benji was now hardly any dryer, but at least somewhat more focused. "What are you all doing here anyway?" he asked, finally giving up on the towel that by now was dripping itself.

"We got an automated emergency message from Skye," Ethan said, who had been helping Luther to put the door back in place. It was hanging at a strange angle when open, but surprisingly the lock still shut, holding it in place. "It was coming from this location." He tried to say it as calm as possible, but of course, the technician was immediately alarmed.

"What? Skye? What happened? Where is she?" he asked and thought he could feel his heart skip a beat. He felt more than slightly guilty for not having thought about his girlfriend until now. Who knew what might have happened to her!

"No idea. The signal of her mobile is still coming from this location, but the only one who was here when we came in was this clown," Luther replied, indicating the dead body that was still lying on the floor between the sofas, by now in a small puddle of his own blood that had started forming around him. Benji swallowed hard. Surely Holt wouldn't have gone out leaving her phone behind, and even if so, it would rather be lying somewhere in plain sight, on a table or a shelf, but he couldn't see it anywhere here. That meant that either she was still here, which was more than unlikely, or that she hadn't left of her own free will, which was more than disturbing. "We have to find her!"

"And we will," Ethan said in the voice that left no room for doubt. "But it helps no one if you catch the flu, so why don't you get yourself warmed up and dry while we see what we can find out here?"

Benji was about to object, but there was not much he could say. Even though he hated to admit it he knew that Ethan was right, especially when he looked down at his feet where a puddle had been forming that was already bigger than the one around the dead man. "Alright," he said with a defeated sigh and snatched the change of clothes from his suitcase by the sofa before he vanished into the bathroom.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"So what do we got?" Benji asked, buttoning up his shirt as he reemerged from the bathroom. His hair was still wet, but not in a cold and damp way anymore, and otherwise he felt thoroughly warmed up. He was once again amazed at how refreshing even a short shower could be, hurrying up as he had he hadn't even taken ten minutes and half of that time had been fighting himself out of the wet clothes he had been wearing before. And in those ten minutes he had had time to sort his thoughts, so now he was not only somewhat more comfortable, but also a little more calm and focused.

"Everything seems to be in order, but I'm sure our guest has been searching for something. He had enough time to go through everything without making a mess and didn't have to fear to be interrupted. Still we don't know what he's been searching for," Ethan stated coming out of the kitchen. "Do you have idea who he is yet?"

"Nothing here. No papers, no cards. Except this." It was Brandt, sounding slightly disappointed as he said it, kneeling next to the dead body. The red drops sprinkled on his rubber gloves indicated that he had been searching the poor man's pockets. He was holding up a blue piece of paper in a look-through plastic envelope with a large number twelve printed on either side. At the top it had a ribbon attached to it, making it look like the kind of ID-card someone would wear around their neck. "Anything on the facial recognition?"

"Nope, nothing here," Luther said, shaking his head from where he had barricaded himself behind several laptop computers. "No match yet, not in our database, or Interpol, or anything else. I've tried it with facial recognition, fingerprints, DNA, everything. But I don't think he's listed anywhere. But as we know he was the second person to enter the flat maybe I can draw something up from comparing the video footage."

Silently Ethan nodded, but before he could say anything, Luther went on: "Why did you have to shoot him, anyway?" he grumbled, without interrupting his typing. "This would be so much easier if we could just ask him."

"He had a knife. It would have been messy if I hadn't," Ethan said, matter-of-fact.

"Messy indeed," Brandt added, picking up a thin blade, somewhere between three and four inches long, that had still been half hidden in the man's sleeve. Remembering how close he had been standing to the impostor, he didn't want to imagine what would have happened, if he had lashed out with this only once.

From the pained grimace Benji made he most likely thought the same, drawing in the air with a hiss. "That looks sharp."

As for now there was obviously nothing more to gather from the body, Ethan turned away, slowly pacing the room, thinking. "We have to assume that this man, the people who've been chasing you through the city and whoever Skye is with right now are connected, at the very least," he said, turning back to Benji. "Is there anything you can tell us about them? Any details?"

"There were five of them back in Oxford Street," the technician recalled what he had seen earlier. "Four were real gorillas, six feet plus, but otherwise average looking. Their leader though was smaller, five-eight, I'd say, thin, pale, strange dark red hair, don't know him though. I can't tell you how many were in the car, but three got out when it crashed. The car, by the way, was a black Mercedes, 90's model, with a weird scratch above the left front tire, although now it most likely has a few more. And I don't have the license plate," he finished, with a bit of a pained expression, but no one would hold it against him that he hadn't remembered that back then. "But maybe we can find that out over the police register, after all it was involved in a massive traffic collision earlier today." Which he had caused, he thought, but didn't say it.

"That might take a while, but it's worth a try," Luther said and opened another window on one of his screens.

With a sigh Benji rubbed his face. "Also that car has been standing opposite the house the whole morning. They've been watching us all along." He was still wondering how he had missed that earlier. Vacation or not, he was a field agent, for god's sake! He should have seen it, and then maybe he could have prevented all of this. But he hadn't and now they were in this mess.

"At least that makes it almost impossible that what happened to Benji and whatever happened here is not connected," Ethan thought aloud. Although he had learned in this line of work to use this word carefully, it would be a very strange coincidence if there was no connection between the Mercedes and the redhead who had been following Benji earlier. And no coincidence was ever just that, for usually there was always someone to take advantage of it. "But still, right now that car is about our only lead."

"Not quite," Luther put in, peeking over his wall of displays. "I finished the comparison of the video footage of Benji entering and our friend here. It's not much, but maybe it will help us find out who he is. This is what I got: He's smaller than Benji, almost an inch, stronger in build with broader shoulders, shorter arms and slightly different proportions. And I'm pretty sure he's left-handed."

Luther's report was cut short by a muffled sneeze coming from underneath one of the sofas. Surprised, Luther stood up to see Brandt half hidden by the piece of furniture he had crawled under, his legs sticking out in a rather curious angle.

"Brandt?" Benji asked, worried, tilting his head to get a better look. "Uh, what is it you're doing down there?"

"I think I found the phone," the other agent's voice replied, muffled and closely followed by another sneeze. "And a hell lot of dust." Carefully he wriggled back out, the phone in one hand, in the other a book that still looked as good as new. Giving the first to Luther and putting the second on the table, Brandt tried rather unsuccessfully to brush the dust off his clothes.

Ethan meanwhile was absorbed in his own thoughts. The phone, of course, might give them some more useful information, but that was Luther's domain. In the meantime, he was bothered by something else. "Smaller than Benji, you said?"

"Yes," Luther replied, without looking up from his new task. "About an inch."

The other two looked at Ethan curiously, who himself was looking nowhere in particular, but both of them knew better than to interrupt his thoughts. "Benji?" he finally asked, still wearing this slightly absent-minded look he always had when he was figuring something out. "Would you just go over there for a moment?"

Looking at the spot at the door that he was indicating, the technician was about to ask why, but then he thought better. "Alright," he said with the hint of a question in his voice, obediently walking over to the door. There he turned around, throwing his arms up. "And now?"

"Now come back here, please," Ethan answered.

Benji shook his head in reply. "I don't see how this is helping," he complained, but made his way back to the others anyway.

"Actually, neither do I," Brandt joined him, looking at Ethan in the hope of getting an explanation, but the older agent had his eyes fixed on the spot in the middle of the room Benji had crossed twice in his journey.

He silently mumbled: "You didn't duck."

"Excuse me, what?" Benji asked, not sure if he hadn't heard it right, or that comment really wasn't making any sense at all.

Ethan finally snapped out of his thinkers' look. "You didn't duck under that hanging lamp over there."

"Of course not, why should I?" the Brit replied as if it was something completely obvious, but then he explained. "I know that I don't have to. Remember the last time we were here? After a day I got so annoyed by constantly hitting my head on that lamp that I hung it only a little higher, just high enough it wouldn't bother me anymore."

Ethan nodded and for a moment the shadow of a smile flickered over his face. He remembered that encounter quite well. "Yes," he said, then led them back to the actual topic. "But our John Doe here earlier hit his head on precisely that lamp."

Brandt's eyes narrowed when he started to catch his train of thought. "Which means that he is taller than Benji."

"But Luther said that in the video he was smaller than me," the blond man protested, not grasping the implications yet, or maybe rather not wanting to.

"He was," Luther threw in without interrupting his work. With enough other things to do he only partially paid attention to the others.

It was Brandt who finished the conclusion. "Which means that this guy," he pointed at the body, "is not the same as the one in the video."

Benji stared at him open-mouthed for a moment as the full extent of that idea was forced on him. "Are you telling me that there's someone else running around the city as me?"

"Possibly," Ethan stated calmly. The idea had already crossed his mind earlier, but now he was sure.

Brandt however was already thinking a step further. "Wait a moment. If he is not the one in the video, then how did he get in? And as Holt obviously isn't here anymore, how did she and the other guy get out?"

"Through the door?" Benji suggested, although he knew himself that that was unlikely. "They could have hacked into the camera and changed the footage, so it looks like there was only one who never got out."

But even as he was still talking, Luther shook his head. "Getting top of the line masks is one thing, hacking into a secure IMF video feed is another and if they had, I'd know. But as things are, I've been the only one to even view that footage in months. I'm not even sure they knew there was a camera there."

"They knew of the camera, or at the very least they suspected that. Otherwise they wouldn't have brought masks," Ethan put in, while Brandt finally decided to get rid of his rubber gloves.

"So, if they knew about the camera, what about the old trick with the photograph?"

But Luther shook his head again. "The camera is placed on the underside of the staircase landing between first and second floor. To reach that spot alone, for taking the picture and placing it in front of the lens, would be hard, but then you would also have to know the camera's exact position, the angle, the zoom factor, what lens is used, et cetera. That involves a lot of effort and a lot of planing. And if they had had a plan like that, I don't think they'd have bothered with the mask."

"So, not the front door then," Benji summed it up with a sigh, and let himself fall on one of the sofas.

"Is there any back door? Any other way they could have gotten in and out?" Ethan asked although he knew the answer, even before Brandt said it.

"There's always a back-door. But we would have noticed if it had been opened, and even if they knew there was one, I doubt they'd have found it."

Suddenly Benji jumped up, slapping his hand against his forehead. "Of course! The balcony!" He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it earlier. "It's the only other way out."

Brandt raised an eyebrow at him. "Wouldn't that be a little too open?"

"How many people do you think come by this street?" Benji asked rhetorically. "No, they'd have been perfectly safe, especially if they had someone standing guard at either end of the road. And I bet they also had some kind of fake official IDs just in case."

Brandt sighed. "So if it was the balcony they used, that leaves us where?"

"With a group of people with unclear motives but presumably unlimited manpower, the ability to create masks, voice-chips and most likely also good forged IDs, and for some reason enough information about Benji to authentically impersonate him, who we have to believe have managed to abduct a trained IMF agent," Ethan summed it up.

Benji laughed sarcastically. "So basically our everyday evil organization."

"Maybe I've got something more," Luther said, finally reappearing from behind his computer screens. Coming over to the other side of the table, he turned around one of the notebooks. "I've managed to find Benji's black Mercedes and trace the plates," he explained, calling up different windows to illustrate his words. "It's a company car belonging to Clarkson Enterprises, which happens to be a daughter of Kennedy Ltd."

"Nolan," Benji spit the name out like a curse. Somehow the man still managed to ruin his day from the grave. "I should have known."

He took a deep breath and became aware that everyone was suddenly looking at him. "I'm sorry," he said finally, focusing back on the screen. "Go on, please."

"Officially they are doing Online Marketing Management, but being related to Kennedy Ltd., I think we can safely assume that that is not their main source of income," Luther continued, scrolling over the companies official website. "They have several offices in and around London, so it's not surprising that we stumbled across them. But I might have our connection."

Clicking on the staff page, he turned the screen a little towards Benji. "The head of CE is one Lydia Ferret, chairing the committee that officially runs the business, but includes some very curious people. The most interesting here is Ian Stuart, officially head of human resources. I think you'll recognize him."

For a moment Benji stared at the picture on the screen, dumbfounded, before he managed to say something. "That's him! That's the red-head from the alleyway!"

Luther nodded. "I thought so. And there we got our connection," he said and took the computer back. Closing the window and opening another one, he went on: "But that's not the best part yet. I've run a facial recognition program over the live feeds of all London security camera's I could get access to, and I found something."

"Stuart?" Ethan asked, hopefully. As they could be sure he was involved in the situation somehow, to watch him could be quite useful, or even better, to pick him up somewhere. He was certain Stuart was a high level player, not only in the company but also in whatever scheme was going on, and so he would have lots of potentially useful information. And they had methods to be rather convincing.

But Luther shook his head. "No, at least not yet. And nothing on Skye either," he said and turned the display, so they could all see the video footage. It showed a glass door, probably the entrance to some building, and people passing by. A man entered the building and the program showed a match, details quickly scrolling down at the side. "I found Benji."

"But I've been here the whole time! And I don't even know where that is," the technician protested.

But Ethan already had the lead. "Because that's not actually you, but the other impersonator."

Again Luther nodded. "Most likely. And here we see him entering the Roman Tower, an office building down in Lambeth, a whole floor of which is rented to Clarkson Enterprises."

"So what do we do now?" Brandt asked, leaning against the wall.

"We go in," Benji said without hesitation. "I mean it might not be exactly what we're looking for, but who knows what we might find there." Or whom, he silently added to himself. If his lookalike was going into that office building, they might very well be able to find Skye in there, or at the very least some clue as to where they were holding her.

"And how do you propose we do that?" Brandt asked back, provocatively, but still good humored. "I mean we can't just walk in there."

For a moment there was silence in the room, when Benji suddenly had an idea. "Well, you can't," he said, thoughtfully looking at the dead body that was still lying on the floor. "But I could play him. I bet I would get in without a problem, wouldn't even need a mask, although I sure wouldn't mind to have one."

"That's crazy," Brandt put in, but Ethan shook his head.

"No, actually it's genius," the senior agent said. "As far as we know, they think Benji's still at the bottom of the Thames. And even if not, nobody would ever expect it."

Disbelievingly, Luther shook his head. "In other words, this is so crazy it might even work," he muttered. "But still there's a lot of risk. From out here I don't have access to anything. That means that we can't watch you, and glasses won't work either, for obvious reasons. Our only contact would be over radio, otherwise you'd be on your own."

"Still, it's not as if we're planning something big," Ethan put in. "Just some small observation, and if something goes wrong we're standing by on the outside. Besides we'll have to go into that building at some point anyway. And to approach it from somewhere else we need more information, which we can gather most easily from inside."

"Like he said," Benji added. "Just a quick look around. Easy in, easy out, nothing to it."

A small smile flashed over Luther's face, but he hid it so quickly no one noticed. "I still don't know, but alright," he said, again shaking his head. "If you want to do this, go ahead, count me in. After all someone's got to look after you."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The first thing Skye felt when she woke up was a massive headache. The first thing she felt when she opened her eyes was a very strong flash of nausea. Just in time she managed to control the urge of throwing up by closing her eyes again, before she would have vomited all over herself. Taking a deep breath, she decided to first see what she could find out about her whereabouts without looking around.

There was a strong smell of gasoline lingering in the room that didn't help to make her feel any better. Otherwise the air was stale, but cold, and a few more deep breaths managed to clear her head. She found herself half lying, half sitting on a cold and slightly wet bare stone floor, her back to what seemed to be a big metal pipeline. Her hands were taped together horribly tightly with duct tape and secured with the same to a smaller pipe behind her back which went up from the larger one. Her legs were bound up to her knees, most likely encased in tape, too, both of which made it hard to move into a more comfortable position.

Once she was sure she wouldn't have to be sick, Skye tried again to open her eyes, more carefully this time. The room which she was in, was, as she would already have guessed, the maintenance room of a probably large building. Cables and pipes were running up and down the walls and over the ceiling in loose bundles, marked with faded signs, yellow with age, some of which seemed as if a mouse might have had a bite. Loosely scattered around the room, she saw various installations related to water, heating, ventilation and power distribution, but the main part was an enormous gasoline tank, which obviously also was the source of the stench. In the middle of the room a single light-bulb was hanging from the ceiling on a loose wire, but right now the only source of light was a row of small, dirty windows that ran along the top of the wall on one side.

As she finished her observation of the room, Skye realized several things. For one she was alone, most likely had been for a while and probably would stay alone for the foreseeable future, which meant that she was not in any immediate danger. That was good.

Secondly her position was not only terribly uncomfortable, but she also felt that if she didn't move soon, some part of her body would subsequently die. That was not so good. But at least, as she could assume to stay undisturbed for a while, she would have the time to try and change that.

Carefully she pulled at her ties. At first, all that happened was that the tape dug deeper into her hands, but soon she could feel it loosen somewhat around the pipe. It would not rip, of course not, they had wrapped her in several layers of it, but at least she could stretch it enough, so she could move her hands along the pipe. Pushing herself up with her feet, she brought herself into more of a sitting position. It was a huge effort, but very much worth it, she realized, when a tingling sensation told her that blood was flowing back into the parts of her body that had already gone numb.

With a sigh she sat back against the pipeline, moving her feet as far as she could, to support the blood-flow in her legs. Her position was still not very comfortable, but at least like this she could sit for a while.

The next step now was to find a way to get out. Skye had already realized that the windows were too small to get through and apart from them there was only one door. And that door most likely was locked. With what was lying around it was improbable that she would be able to open it, so to get out she would have to wait until someone would come in. And that, she thought, might take a really long time. But at least then, she would be ready.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"I'm going in. Radio silence from now on," Benji announced standing in front of the Roman Tower's impressive main entrance. The floor-to-ceiling glass double-doors were not mirrored and from outside he could already see the great marble hall behind it. The doors were fitting just fine into the tower's design of huge windows fitted in a stainless steel frame. To others it would solely have been an ordinary office complex, but him it reminded a little too much of certain other high buildings.

"Roger that," Luther voice replied in his left ear and taking another deep breath, Benji pushed through the door.

The entrance hall was as he had seen it from outside: Unbelievably huge, the ceiling twice as high as that of a usual room and decked all in marble so that each of Benji's steps was reverberating from the walls. In the middle of the room stood a single information point, with three helpful staff members with bored looks sitting inside a square of plain black desks, next to a huge sign that told every visitor what to find on which floor.

Swiftly Benji strode through the hall, trying to look as self-confident as he could, although actually he had no idea where to go. Crossing the room, he headed straight for the back wall that seemed to consist solely of elevator doors, when somewhere behind him, a sweet, female voice called: "Good afternoon!"

Not sure if he was meant, although apart from the information desk staff and the occasional security guard he was the only person around, Benji slowed down and half turned, to see a small, stocky lady come straight at him. From the picture he had seen earlier, he recognized Lydia Ferret, the CEO of Clarkson Enterprises, now dressed in a dark blue business jumpsuit, her dark hair put up in a tight bun. With a wide, friendly smile that did not quite match her crocodile eyes, she caught up with him. She was smaller than Benji would have thought. Although she was wearing high-heeled shoes, she could hardly be taller than Skye.

"Your number, please," she said in a voice as if she was talking about the weather, but with a certain edge to it. "You know I can never tell you apart without."

For a moment the agent was taken aback, before he realized what she was talking about. "Oh, yes. Of course," he said, pulling out the blue card on the ribbon around his neck, which had up to now been hidden underneath his coat.

Ferret's face brightened when she saw the black number on blue ground, her smile broadening so much he almost feared her face would explode. "Oh, number twelve! How are things going? Have you found anything?"

"Not yet," Benji replied, not knowing what else to say. "But I'll keep looking."

Ferret smiled, stepping into the elevator that had just arrived. Without looking at it, she tapped on the button of the tenth floor. "I'm sure you will. I'm sorry I can't give you anyone to help, but I can't pull anyone off another project. Especially not now that things are starting to go wrong. However as Ian has taken care of the subject, I think you'll be fine on your own. You'll have all the time in the world."

"I understand," Benji answered, then he tried to take a bit of a risk. "What about the girl?"

Ferret face grew milder again. "Ah, her," she said with a soft voice. "She really is a nice catch. I'm just glad number four has captured her alive. Since Ian and his thugs did not only not manage to bring in the subject, but in the process scared him so much that he drowned himself in the Thames, from where we'll most likely never even get his body back in a decent state, we'll have to work with her. That might take some more time, but it's the only thing we have. We'll stick to the cover for now, nevertheless. And we will need some more information about her, I'm sure you will find something."

Benji managed to suppress a sigh of relief at knowing that Skye was definitely still alive, when the elevator stopped, revealing a door with a swipe-card lock. They had not found a card on the body of their guest, so this came somewhat unexpected, but then, improvising was what this job was all about. Putting his hands first in his outer, then his inner coat pockets, he did as if he was searching for his card, but couldn't find it. "Oh, this is embarrassing," he finally said with an apologizing smile. "I must have lost it back in the apartment."

"No problem," the woman replied, by now she had produced her own card out of her purse. With a practiced motion, she slid it through the sensor with her right hand, then placed her left on the pad that lid up next to the card-swipe. A second later the door slid open, revealing a surprisingly normal looking hallway with offices to either side and a dusty plant next to a water dispenser. "You can get it back later. It's not as if anyone could find it in the meantime. Now, I'm sorry, but I've got quite a tight schedule. Is there anything else?"

"Uh, yes. One thing," Benji put in. He knew he was stretching his luck, but the information he might get was most likely worth it. "Would it be possible for me to get access to the girl? I might have a few questions when I come back later on."

Ferret chuckled, a shrill, dissonant laugh that hurt his ears. "Of course, we're holding her in the usual quarters," she said, smiling. "But as I said, take your time. We're not in a hurry, and there's a few things I'll have to sort out first, now that we're changing the plan, before we can proceed to phase two. And now, excuse me, please."

With a last nod, she turned and proceeded down the corridor, vanishing into one of the offices. Finally Benji was alone again. "I'm inside the CE floor," he announced quietly, touching the button on his ear-piece, but there was no reply. "Base, do you copy?"

As there was no one around, he stopped for a moment at the water dispenser to listen more intently, but there was nothing. Literally nothing, not even a minute trace of background white-noise. "Does anybody copy?" he asked again, although he didn't really expect any reply anymore. Taking another look around to be sure that he really was alone, he pulled out his phone to check the transmission, but there was nothing he could do. Not even his phone had any kind of connection.

With a sigh, he put it back in the inside pocket of his coat, then he downed his cup of water like a vodka shot, before he went to have a look down the corridor. Now that he was already here, he could at least see if he could find something useful.

There were several offices on the floor, each of which presumably contained a computer connected to an internal network, but as the doors were made of milk glass, they also were all harboring the possibility of running into someone. Therefore he stored them in his mind as plan B, when suddenly he saw his plan A.

At the end of the corridor was a plain white metal door, the sign next to which said 'Server-room'. Much more interesting however was the piece of paper that was pasted on it with duct-tape, on which was written in handwritten block letters:

'Now entering IT-territory. Not IT? Keep out! Don't know it? Don't touch it! Especially not as long as it's running! (And even more so if it's not.) Thanks.

\- The guy who's keeping everything together.'

Involuntarily Benji smiled as he entered the room. The interior was not as big as he had thought, and seemed even smaller through the racks with server arrays that were stacked up to the ceiling on either side. Who ever had installed them, had put them up with the front to the wall, so that the cable connections that seemed to run from every single computer to every other one, were visible. Some of the cables even reached across the corridor that remained in the middle and were taped against the ceiling to be out of the way.

On the other end of the room, opposite the door, stood a desk, on which someone had mounted five high-resolution screens, two on top of the other three, and still managed to leave enough space for a keyboard and a ten-key mouse. A headset was hanging over the lower far right screen. A small desktop lamp was the only source of light in the room.

Closing the door, the technician walked over to the desk. It didn't take him long to find the switch on the power strip that connected to all the monitors and obediently they flickered to life. Benji's smile broadened when he saw the familiar screen of Command and Conquer coming up, divided on all of them.

"But you're not here to play," he reminded himself, and clicked the program away on the main screen as he sat down. On the blank desktop that was behind it he opened up the command line and within seconds he was inside the server structure. Then he set up a secure internet connection to a server of his own, where he could dump everything important he found to retrieve it later on. After that, he started to systematically comb through the files, to see what was worth trying to get access to.

He was left undisturbed for a while, so he managed to put together a nice little compilation that mostly contained plans of the building, the electrical system, water and gas lines and other infrastructural systems. It wasn't exactly what he had been looking for, but he had soon noticed that there was no 'non-official' information about CE, at least not on this server array. Also there was nothing that told him anything about where Skye was. He was about to add some last details and then wrap it up, when the door opened behind him, and a distinctly Scottish voice asked: "Hey! What're ye doing?"

Turning around he saw that the voice belonged to a young man in his twenties, most likely slightly smaller than him, with fluffy black hair. He was wearing washed-out jeans, chucks of an undefinable color and a sweatshirt that might have been blue at some point, carrying a pack of sandwiches, a bottle of coke and a pack of McCoy's, and who obviously was the master of this dungeon. Trying to come up with an at least somewhat plausible explanation, Benji said the first thing that popped into his mind, although he knew that anyone who understood at least a little about computers would know that he was lying at the first glance at the monitor behind him: "Repairing the specs on the firewall of the second proxy?"

"My firewall is completely fine!" the young man replied defensively, but then started thinking. "Wait. Ye guys don't usually know anything about that kind of stuff. Ye wouldn't even know what a proxy is if I put one right in front of ya. And no one I've met here so far would be able to do, whatever it is ye did there."

He paused for a moment as he realized that this man had done something to his computers he couldn't identify, at least not in that short a time from so far away. But then he took a deep breath and continued. "But you're not one o' them, are ya? 'cause you're the actual guy!"

"And you're very perceptive," Benji replied. He already liked this one way better than the old hag named Lydia.

His comment had only been a statement, but the geek got it the wrong way. "I don't know anything and that's just the way I like it." He suddenly had his guard back up, and this time it was not a matter of pride, as it had been when the older technician had doubted the correctness of his server-protocols, but one of self preservation.

Benji sighed. "Relax. I'm not here after you."

The man still looked somewhat doubtful, but at least less frightened.

"You said it yourself, I'm not one of them," the agent continued. "I was looking for some information, and found your little network somewhat helpful. However computers only go so far and maybe you could help me out to fill in the blanks?"

"I've told ya already, I don't know nothing," the man replied, still somewhat skeptical, but he finally decided to enter the room and closed the door behind him. Storing his lunch in a corner behind his monitor array, he continued: "I sure as hell don't know that all the companies' tax returns are actually forged. Which means that I have no idea, that Clarkson Enterprises doesn't actually exist, at least not in the way they pretend to be. As far as I know, all they do is consulting on Online Marketing Management, although no one working here would be any good at that with the lousy computer skills they have, but I might just never have noticed that." He stopped for a moment, then smiled. "And the fact I'm still standing here most likely means that you believe me. Me name's Neil, by the way. Neil Sullivan."

"Benji. That is actually Benjamin, but, well..." He stopped for a moment, glancing at the screen to make sure that his upload was finished as Neil sat down and for a moment just stared. Carefully Benji asked: "If you know all of that, why are you still working here?"

The other technician didn't even look up as he replied. "Let's say that after the first time I asked weird questions, I realized just how much I'd like my head to stay where it is. Besides they really do pay well. Oh, this is so fascinating, I don't even understand half of what ya did there."

Still marveling at how someone could be fascinated at not understanding something, Benji decided to get back to his original problem. "Actually I'm looking for someone. A woman, about this tall, long blond hair, speaking with a slight Scandinavian accent. You don't happen to know where I might find her?"

For a moment Neil looked away from his screen and shrugged. "Sorry, mate. Can't help ya there. I hardly ever get out of here. I'm supposed to be tech support for the whole building, but half of the offices are empty and I don't even want to know what they are doing in the ones that aren't." Turning back to his display he continued: "But if I had to make a guess, I'd say ye should have a look in the basement. That's one of the few areas I don't have access to."

"Speaking of access: Are all the floors secured like this one?" The agent had been wondering about this for some time, especially as he had found nothing about that in Neil's server network, and the security system could present a problem the next time he was in that elevator. He hated to admit it, but he had been lucky the first time around and he couldn't expect that to happen again.

"The hand-print-scanner-thing? Yes, that's on all the levels, except the entrance hall," the younger man said sour faced. "And all of that is controlled over the security servers which themselves are in the basement. Before ya ask, there's no way to get into that server from here."

"You tried that?" Benji asked, curiously. Neil shrugged.

"I do get bored around here pretty easily and video games only go so far," he explained and finally closed Benji's command line window. "If ye want to, feel free to try, but I can tell ya, I've had a lot of free time."

The older man thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "No, thanks. I think I should go now. Are you going to be alright? I mean after all you told me..."

The Scotsman grinned, on his five screens his game was already up again and his headset hanging around his neck. "I've been working the whole time. I've got no idea what ye are talking about."

"Have fun," Benji chuckled, as he closed the door behind him. The corridor outside was as he had left it, empty except for the plant and the water dispenser. If Neil was right, then there was a security lock on all doors, but the one to the entrance hall, which meant that at least he would get out without a problem. Still he was slightly nervous when he entered the elevator and pressed the ground floor button, but when the cabin reached it's destination, the doors slid open with a delightful chime. With long strides he crossed the marble hall and nearly flinched when a copy of himself passed him on his way out. However he managed to keep his face and curtly nodded to the other man, before he was through the door. Taking a sharp right, he headed straight down the street for a few meters, before he activated his radio. "Anyone, do you read?"

"We read you, loud and clear," Luther's voice came back, audibly relieved.

Benji had been worrying that they might get concerned about his silence and come up with bad ideas, which was promptly confirmed by Ethan. "What happened? We were about to come after you."

"I believe the building has a structure obstructing the usual radio frequencies. Not even mobiles work," Benji answered.

"No kidding," Luther's grumbled reply came back, which the Brit decided to ignore.

"All in all it's a bit of a long story, I'll tell you back at the flat. Meanwhile, Luther, I've dumped something for you on server B221," he continued his report.

"Got it," the other agent acknowledged.

Then finally Brandt chimed in: "Stay where you are, I'll pick you up."


	8. Chapter 7

**Christmas 7**

Skye was frustrated. Although she had managed to stretch her ties enough to move them up and down the small pipe they were wrapped around, thanks to the tight tape around her ankles and the big pipeline on which she was forced to lean, she could not stand up. That in turn caused a constant numb pain in her back and a somewhat sleepy feeling in her legs, as well as a sharp stinging feeling in different parts of her body, depending on what nerve she was lying on.

Apart from that, she was horribly bored. The room didn't have much to look at and by now she thought she knew every flock of dust, every cobweb and every spider in the room well enough that she could actually have given them names. And, what made it more frustrating, by now she was sure that in the whole of the room there was nothing that could have helped her. She didn't even have her hairpins anymore, her captors had made sure of that. So even if she managed to find a way to cut through the tape that was keeping her in place, she was still dependent on someone coming by to let her out. And by now she wasn't sure there would ever be anyone coming in.

Just as she thought that, a key turned in the lock,and slowly the heavy metal door opened. A man came in, dressed in the uniform of a maintenance technician. He switched on the light, and the light-bulb hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room actually started to glow in a dim, orange light, without actually increasing the lighting situation. Without even looking at her, he headed over to one of the machines, and started typing around on a keypad.

"Excuse me?" Skye asked, her voice sounding dry and raspy. The technician did not turn around, nor showed with any other reaction that he had actually heard her.

"Hey!" she added a little louder, but still the man didn't look at her, even less tell her the time. Most likely he simply ignored her. Instead he finished his work, then turned back to the door.

She called after him, nearly shouting, which didn't do her voice any good, but the only reply she got was a flick of the light-switch and a bang of the door.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"We still don't know for sure where Skye is, but it's a good guess that she's being held in the basement," Benji explained, standing in front of different schematics of the building that were projected against the wall. While Brandt had picked him up in Lambeth, Luther had already downloaded what he had earlier stored on one of the IMF servers. "However that's more of a minor concern, because to get anywhere but the entrance hall, we have to get through the elevator that is secured by swipe-card, which we could copy easily, and by a hand-print-scanner, which we can't copy. The only way for one of us then to gain access to anywhere is to enter a new profile in the security server, which, again, is located in a locked room in the basement."

"So basically what you are saying is, we can't get in," Brandt commented in his usual cynical, end-of-the-world way.

Ethan, who was standing next to him, was more hopeful. "That is, of course, unless you have a plan?"

Benji's face beamed as he replied: "Indeed, I have! There are ventilation shafts running through the building, used for heating and air-condition. Each floor has their own sealed system, with small, high pressure pipes supplying the usual, larger vent-shafts. However, as the air-intake is on the ground floor, and the heating system in the basement, the systems of those two levels are connected through a pipeline large enough for a person to go through.

"That means," he continued, "if we assume that I am the one going in to find Skye, someone else could go in beforehand, entering the ventilation system through the ground floor bathroom and climb to the server room, where he could then access the server to enter the fake profile so that I can use the elevator. Getting out of the server room should be no problem with a skeleton key, and as the elevators are not locked on the ground floor, getting out through the entrance hall should be even easier. Especially if we're working with masks, since anyone looking like me shouldn't get any attention. Now, the best person for the climbing part logically would be Ethan."

"I'm flattered, Benji," the senior agent interrupted him. "However there's one tiny problem: I'm about three inches smaller than you, and I'm pretty sure that somebody would notice."

Clenching his teeth, the technician sharply pulled in the air. "Right," he stated and looked at the others.

"Well, I'm never going to fit through that pipeline," Luther commented, while Brandt demonstratively looked up to the ceiling and sighed.

"I don't like where this is going."

"Oh, come on," Benji chaffed him. "It's only about ten feet from the ground floor air-shaft to the basement system, end even less from there to the floor of the server room. Nothing hot, nothing sharp and you can just walk out, when you're done. Mine is the hard part."

Brandt sighed sarcastically. "Yeah, only a narrow shaft with rats and spiders and god-knows-what," he muttered, but then came back on topic. "OK, so when I'm there, how do I install the profile?"

"This should do the trick," the technician explained, holding up a plain black USB flash drive, or what looked like it. "This is not a storage device, but actually a high-power sender and receiver. With that we can interface the server with any computer, which will not only allow us to add any profiles we wish, but, if we're lucky, also to gain at least partial control over the security systems, cameras, doors, et cetera, and maybe also search through the server for useful information."

"What about the structure? Earlier you said it obstructed all kinds of radio signals," Ethan asked curiously.

"Not quite right," Luther put in. "It's obstructing all of the usual frequencies. But I've analyzed the signals going out and the structure seems to swallow the middle and some of the upper part of the spectrum. Now, if we move our carrier wave into the extreme low frequency band, it should get through without a problem."

"And that should also enable our usual radio communication," Benji concluded and looked at each of the others in turn.

"Sounds like a plan," Ethan replied and looked over to Brandt who was turning the slim black stick in his fingers.

Finally the analyst stood up, slipping the small device into his pocket. "Let's do this."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

With a last effort, Skye pushed herself up onto the pipeline. Ever since the maintenance technician had come by, she had tried to find a way to make herself more comfortable. At some point she had noted that, although her legs were tied together, she could still push herself up a little, and maybe even sit on the big pipe that had made her back ache for so long. It had been hard work, several times she had slipped on the wet stone floor or off the round metal pipe and as she couldn't move as she would have liked to, every try had been a massive effort, after which she had had to catch her breath again, but slowly she had worked her way up.

Now she was very much finished off, breathing heavily, her shirt sweaty through and through, which she was sure she was going to regret once she was cooling down again, but at least more comfortable. With a relieved sigh, she arched her back against the small pipe behind her and with some delight felt her stiff muscles stretch. There was an audible cracking sound, when she carefully rolled her shoulders as far as her ties would permit.

Then she looked around. From her now more elevated position, she could see a little more of the room, but as she had thought there was nothing there that could have been useful to her. The light from outside that had grown somewhat brighter in the meantime helped a little, but also didn't reveal anything previously unseen. As she knew it couldn't have been night already, she guessed that most likely the weather outside had just cleared up. Also it was a safe bet that the sun was slowly setting and the windows in the wall were facing west. Which meant that soon enough she might not have any light at all.

That in mind, Skye took a second and third sweep of the room, but didn't find anything she wouldn't have seen before. When the light indeed started to fade again soon, she decided it would be better to concentrate on what might actually be in her reach. With her legs taped together and no way to get out of her boots, she could rule out anything on the floor. Not that anything would have been lying around.

With that she started feeling around in the vicinity of her hands, and soon scolded herself for not thinking about that earlier. On the small pipe she was tied to there was a connection, that, now that she was sitting, was right above her hands. When she carefully leaned forward, she was just able to stretch her hands up far enough to rub her tape binds against the sharp lower edge of the clamps. If she would manage to cut through a few fibers on every layer, she would be able to rip the tape apart. And then she would only need to find a way to get out of the room. By now the small, dirty windows looked pretty promising.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"Copycat going in," Brandt announced as he entered the entrance hall. The marble room was brightly lit, a contrast to the street outside where it was growing dark, the street-lamps switching on at every corner. He blinked a moment until his eyes had adjusted to the sudden change, then headed straight for the bathroom door to his right, exactly where Benji had said it would be. The only people in the room were two security guards standing at the information desk, talking to the three staff members sitting there. No one took any notice of him.

Entering the bathroom, he made sure that all the cabins were empty and he was alone before he looked for the access to the ventilation system. Standing on the toilet right underneath it, he pushed up the grid that covered the air-shaft and pulled himself inside. Closing the access point again, he looked around. Right in front of him, the shaft parted left and right. "Numbercruncher, this is Copycat. I'm in the system. Do you read?"

"Read you loud and clear, signal is strong. Directions coming up," Luther announced, overlaying Brandt's position with the map of the ventilation system on his computer. "Take the next one left, then a right, and then straight ahead for three turns," he instructed the other agent. "Another right on the fourth and then it should be straight down."

"Got it," Brandt acknowledged, half of which was swallowed in a sneeze. "God, someone should clean up here," he muttered, crawling forward as quickly as the limited space permitted him. He soon found the creases that ran across the surface in certain intervals where two pieces of pipe were connected and managed to use them as hand- and footrests to push himself forward. It did not take him five minutes until he crossed the last bend and just managed to stop short, without falling face-first down the pipeline. Carefully he stretched himself to find a grip on the opposite side of the vertical shaft, then pulled his body out underneath him and finally let himself fall the few meters down feet-first into the lower level vent shaft.

"Alright, where to now?" he asked, eager to get out. If crawling in a space that allowed just enough room to move was uncomfortable, standing in one was even more so.

"Turn back the way you came, then the second to your left and the first opening you come across should be yours," Luther instructed.

"Great," Brandt muttered and thought about how to proceed. He decided to turn around now, as opposed to going in lying on his back and turning then, which was already hard enough in his enclosed surroundings. Then he somehow managed to first kneel down, then crouch and finally lie flat in the pipe, not without bumping his head, back and elbows several times.

Proceeding on, he found his exit point after a few more minutes. Carefully, he pulled up the cover grid and placed it on the other side of the hole. Looking down once to confirm it was indeed the server room he would drop into, he somehow managed to move into a sitting position at the edge of the hole. Carefully he tied a thin but strong string to the grid, before he jumped to the floor. Once he had secured his surroundings, he pulled the grid back in its normal position with the string, then ripped it off with a sharp tug.

"Copycat here, I'm in the server room," he reported to the others, while he took a look around. Several workplaces with screens and keyboards were scattered around the room between the massive server-towers. Plugging the transmitter into the main computer array, he chose an access point in a corner that was not immediately visible from the door, just in case. Switching on the monitor he worked his way through the different menus. "Sender-receiver hooked up and working."

"Got you, Copycat. New profile in place, your turn, Deadringer," Luther commented his steps as he worked himself through the servers from his own end. The connection was working perfectly and within a few minutes he had access to everything he could possibly want. With a satisfied smile he sat back and stretched his fingers.

Benji, who had entered after Brandt and waited in the lobby meanwhile folded down his newspaper and turned towards the elevators. Although he knew it was only Brandt, he still found it creepy to hear someone else talk in his own voice, especially as the other agent didn't bother to use his fake British accent as long as no one else was listening.

"I'm in the elevator," he stated as he pressed the basement button and a moment later the doors revealed another swipe-card lock. Taking a deep breath, he took out his blank card and pulled it through the sensor. After a moment's hesitation, a light glowed green and as before the glowing pad came up. More nervous now, he wiped his left hand dry on his trousers before pressing it firmly onto the sensor-pad. Obediently the doors slid open and Benji left the cabin. "Deadringer moving into the corridor."

"I see you, Deadringer," Luther confirmed, but also kept working on his own task. "We've got camera feed, but only partial control over the elevators. The doors run on a separate cycle, all we can do is feed in profiles or cut the power, no way to open them remotely. However we have full access to the database. Nest-egg, take the cameras for a moment, I'd like to have a closer look into this."

"I got the cameras, Numbercruncher," Ethan acknowledged. He was sitting in the van, parked in a side-road near the Roman Tower as a second observer and nearby backup if needed. "For your information, Deadringer: We've got eyes in and in front of all the elevators on every level, but nothing further down any corridor."

"Understood, Nest-egg. I'll proceed with my search, starting with the second door to the right," Benji announced as he headed down the hallway. It was a maintenance corridor with raw walls, lined with pipes and cables and only few doors, all unpainted metal doors with crude plastic signs. The door at the very end of the corridor he knew to be the server room Brandt was currently in, so he could scratch that. Another door obviously led to a walk-in fridge and he hoped that would not be the one he was looking for. Discarding the one door that led to the emergency exit, he had three doors left, each leading to maintenance rooms for water-supply, heating and electricity, and the question was only which to start with. Choosing the one he was nearest to, he pulled out his skeleton key and within seconds the door opened for him.


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

At least it was not complete darkness she was sitting in, Skye thought looking up to the windows from where cold, white light was floating into the room. A street lamp had to be standing right next to them and what little light it was, it at least enabled her to see her surroundings, especially as with the fading sunlight her eyes had gradually gotten used to the dark. Not that there was much to look at, by now she knew where everything was, even with her eyes closed.

She had made some progress in cutting her ties, but not yet enough to actually break them easily and was trying to decide whether she should get some sleep or if it might be better if she didn't even try. In the end she went on cutting some more. If she tried to go to sleep, she at least wanted to be a little comfortable, as much as one could be on a bare stone floor. Taking a deep breath, she stretched herself up again, rubbing the layers of tape against the sharp edge of the clamp that kept the two parts of the pipe together, when there was a sound she did not expect: the soft clicking of a key turned in a lock.

Surprised, Skye stopped, sliding back into her comfortable sitting position. She had not expected anyone else to come by today and at first thought the noise had come from another room, but if there was someone coming, it would be her chance to get out of here and she would take that sooner rather than later. And indeed, a moment later the door opened, throwing a stripe of cold, yellowish light into the room. The light was immediately broken by the shadow of a tall man, who stepped into the room, switching on the light that did not deserve to be called so.

For a moment he stood, blinking into the half-light as his eyes adjusted from the brightness of the corridor, and the agent immediately realized that this was the best chance she would ever get. Already used to the dim light, with very good knowledge of her surroundings and the extra element of surprise as no one would expect that she had managed to get rid of her ties, it was now that she might be able to overtake him, or possibly never.

With an enormous effort she pushed herself off the pipeline she was sitting on, lunging forward at the man who saw her coming, but not fast enough. The rest of the tape that had tied her wrists ripped with a sickening sound and a metallic groan from the pipe it had been wrapped around, leaving her free to use her hands and did so expertly.

Only for a second she hesitated as she saw the face of her keeper, but after that hit even harder in the knowledge that it had to be a mask. The man reflexively pulled up his arms to defend himself, but kept them high, shielding his face and keeping the rest of his body relatively unguarded. Protecting his mask, she realized, seizing the opportunity to deliver several straight, hard blows to his well trained but unprotected midriff. The mixture of surprise, inertia and gravity did it's work, and although with her legs still tied Skye knew she couldn't keep her balance, she at least managed to take the man down with her, landing on top of him.

Holding him down by kneeling on his lower body, finding some satisfaction in the fact that her knees were digging in somewhere around his stomach where it was sure to be painful, she kept her balance with her left elbow, the corresponding arm over his neck, threatening to crush his throat should he make one wrong move. This masquerade had been going on long enough, she thought, as she dug her right hand into the flock of thick blond hair on his forehead and, fueled by fury, pulled tightly.

There was a half suppressed, half suffocated cry of pain and overwhelmed by surprise, Skye instantly let go, maybe a little too suddenly, for his head fell back with a silent thud. For the first time, she actually looked into the man's wide-open tear-filled eyes. Into _his_ eyes! Although in the half-light the dark blue was looked nearly black, the bright spot in his right eye was clearly visible. Still disbelieving she gasped: "Benji?"

"Who else should I be?" he asked, however the playfully mocking tone in his voice was drowned by lack of air and his grin turned into a painful grimace. Too late he realized that in light of today's events he maybe shouldn't have said that and immediately regretted it. Taking as deep a breath as his uncomfortable situation permitted him, he managed to produce a weak smile. "OK, bad question."

Finally Skye snapped out of her momentary trance. "Oh my god! I'm so sorry!" she said repeatedly, while trying her best to shift her weight off him as gently and quickly as she could, however she didn't quite succeed. She was glad that in the bad light at least he couldn't see her blush, however the concern in her voice was rather obvious as she asked: "Are you alright?"

"I'll be fine," Benji groaned, not entirely convincingly and when he sat up, he had to close his eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to throw up, until the throbbing in his head eased away and his body managed to decide where up and down were supposed to be.

Opening his eyes again, he looked right into Skye's worried face, who was about to ask him if he was sure. "Really, I'll be fine," he repeated, with a real smile this time, his voice decidedly more solid and his face somewhat less pale. Now it was his turn to be concerned. "What about you?"

"I'm fine," she replied with a relieved sigh. Then she looked at her feet that were still up to her legs in tape. With a carefully questioning grin she looked back at Benji who by now had gotten up to his knees, although a little more slowly. "You don't happen to have a knife?"

"Actually, I do," he said with that little-child-on-Christmas-eve-grin that he could do so awesomely well, producing Brandt's pocket knife, which he had borrowed for exactly this kind of problem. While he cut through the layers and layers of tape, careful to not accidentally cut anything else, Skye ripped off the remainders that still stuck to her wrists. "Oh, this is good," she sighed, rotating her feet, finally able to move them freely again. "I guess you're not here alone then?"

"No. It was a good thing you called for backup," Benji replied with a smile and helped her up.

Skye now had no more doubts that this was really him. Once she was up on her feet, she caught him in a loving hug, and this time everything felt just right. Gently leaning against his shoulder, she got up on her tiptoes. "Thanks for coming," she whispered, bathing in his warm scent.

"I couldn't just leave you here," he replied with a mischievous smile, leaning back enough to look her in the eyes, when something distracted him.

"Deadringer! Do you copy?"a voice asked in his ear. He had ignored the ongoing conversation in the last few minutes since it had not be important for him, but because of that he had now seemed to miss a few calls. Luther already sounded more than impatient.

With a sigh and an apologizing smile Benji turned away and activated his intercom. "Yes, I read you, Numbercruncher," he answered and immediately got a reply.

"What's your status, Deadringer? You already got us worried."

"I've found Darkhorse. I'm sorry, we, uh, got held up," he apologized, not knowing what else to say. Skye looked at him curiously, only hearing half of the conversation, but Benji decided to fill her in later and now continue before anyone started thinking about what 'being held up' could mean. "We're going out now."

"The corridor and the elevators are clear," Ethan commented and Benji thought he could hear a knowing smile in his voice.

"Got that, Nest-egg," the technician replied, then turned back to Skye. "Shall we?" he asked, laying an arm around her waist and indicating the door.

Chuckling she slipped out of his arm. "Lead the way."

Still smiling, Benji left the room, Skye following behind closely. As Ethan had promised, the corridor was empty and an elevator was already waiting. Just as he stepped inside the cabin, there was a call from Brandt: "Copycat here, I might have a slight problem," he reported.

While Luther had taken over the computer work, he had had a look around in the small room and he didn't like what he found there. "The door of the server room only has a lock on the outside. And the hatch of the ventilation system is three feet above my head with no way to get there. Which means, I can't get out."

"I'll come back and get you." Benji immediately offered, taking a step back, so he now stood inside the door, while Skye was already in the elevator. However before he could get out completely, Luther interrupted him.

"Wait a moment, all of you!" he said, his voice sounding distant with the clicking noise of his keyboard in the background. "Copycat, you'll stay right where you are. I'd like to have some more information, and for that I need you in that server room."

"Numbercruncher, I don't understand. The transmitter is working perfectly, you should have full access to everything," Brandt complained, but Luther had already anticipated that.

"The main server, yes, but routing everything over that computer makes the connection to the internal network horribly slow, and maybe you can help me around that. Besides you could help me pick out the details, because what I just found here is huge."

"What did you find?" Benji asked, curiously, while stepping back into the cabin as standing in the middle of the door had started to feel uncomfortable.

Luther sighed. "This is a whole lot of data and so far I've only been able to skim through a tenth of it, at most. But there is something bad going on, something very bad. They have data on the IMF, safe houses, agents, all kinds of stuff. Including things that are hard to get even with the proper security clearance."

"What do you make of it?" Brandt asked alertly, sounding more than a little concerned.

Luther made a sour face, which the others couldn't see, but clearly hear in his voice. "I've got no idea. But whatever it is, it's nothing good. And I think we should find out more now that we're already here, before they get the chance to notice and move all of this god knows where."

"Then we're going to need a new plan," Ethan put in, taking for granted that they all consented on this, but of course no one objected.

"Well, what about we simply copy everything, get out of here before they notice us and then look at what ever we got there?" Benji asked, spitting out the first thing that came to his mind, hoping that it might be somewhat useful after all.

But Luther immediately destroyed that hope. "As I said, this is a lot of data, it will take hours alone to download and even longer to process it properly. In that time they could make a move, and we've got no idea what that might be. Plus, our next real backup is in D.C. and they'll need at least seven hours until they arrive, which means that in this time we've got to find out what they are doing, shut them down for good or at least lock them up until the cavalry arrives. And we can't do that without a good plan, so I'd say you all get out of there and we think this through together."

"All but me, I guess," Brandt put in.

But his remark was left uncommented, as Ethan suddenly shouted: "Benji, stop that elevator!"

Reflexively the technician, who hadn't even had the chance to bring Skye up to date, hit the emergency stop. He didn't have the time to ask, what was going on.

"Darkhorse has been cloned," Ethan explained calmly, but with a sense of urgency. "I repeat, Darkhorse has been cloned. And the lobby is swarming with them."

"What?" Benji asked disbelieving, until the connection dawned to him. "So that's what she meant with change the plans," he muttered, then slightly louder added: "Dammit, what now?"

Ethan sighed. He knew the Brit wouldn't like his next suggestions. "You can't get Darkhorse out through there, with that many people the chances are too high that someone would notice her and as she's got no ID, if anyone does, you'd both be screwed," he explained. "But we have to make a new plan and regroup, and that's easier if we have you on the outside."

"I can't just leave them here!" the technician protested, as expected, but a soft voice next to him reminded him otherwise.

"I can take care of myself," said Skye, who had understood that this was about her, although she had only heard Benji's part of the conversation. "And if I got you right I'm not alone around here."

Benji was not convinced. He gave her a look that silently asked if she was sure, but she confidently smiled back and with a sigh he gave in. "Alright, I'll come out. But I'll leave her the radio," he said, and, after a confirmation from everyone, pulled out the ear-piece.

After wiping it clean on his shirt, he gave it to Skye, who put it in with professional skill. While she adjusted the little device and had the others fill her in, Benji also took out his skeleton key and the loaded gun he had been carrying in the inside pocket of his coat. "Just in case," he said, handing both to her.

"Thanks," she replied, slipping the key into the pocket of her jeans and the gun into her belt. Then she took a step forward and kissed him on the cheek. It was not much of a good-bye, but time was short. "Could you lend me a hand?" Skye then asked, pointing at an emergency hatch in the ceiling of the cabin.

"Sure," Benji replied reaching up to open it, then he linked his hands to make a step for Skye.

Putting her foot into it, she pulled herself up through the opening in the ceiling. "Take care," she said, before she closed the hatch.

Suddenly Benji realized that now he was all alone. Of course he could be sure that Luther, Ethan and Brandt were still watching, but if he was in trouble they'd never be there fast enough to help him. Then he scolded himself for being so easily terrified, after all the only thing he had to do was get out, and that had already proven easy the last time. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the ground floor button, and a moment later the doors opened.

Ethan had been right when he had said that the foyer was crowded. Even though in the rather large room there was still a lot of space, the people standing around in groups of two, three, or sometimes four people were a stark contrast to the former emptiness of the entry hall.

And Ethan had been right in another thing: Apart from seven or eight of his own lookalikes, and plenty of people in the uniforms of security guards or maintenance staff, there also were several smaller, female figures with distinct white-blond hair. They had indeed copied Skye, several times.

Trying not to look up, Benji crossed the room, hoping that no one would notice him. The many versions of himself did creep him out somewhat, and everything in him wanted to run, but he controlled himself and even tried to smile at the people he passed. Still he was relieved when he was finally through the door, headed away from the Roman Tower, and even more so, when a familiar blue van came around the corner.


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"Benji, calm down," Ethan's voice was still sympathetic, yet there also was a hue of annoyance. It was understandable that the technician was somewhat freaked out by what had happened in the last few hours, however he had been babbling the whole ride back from Lambeth and as they had come right into the evening rush-hour, by now that was a full fifteen minutes. Still, there was no end to be seen.

"How am I supposed to be calm?" he asked, impatiently drumming his fingers onto his knee. "Those people have access to classified IMF information, and we still don't have an idea how. Neither do we have a plan to stop them, because we've got no idea what it actually is they are doing and meanwhile ten other versions of me are running around the city, doing god-knows-what. _How_ am I supposed to be calm?"

"That's twelve actually," Brandt put in dryly. He and Luther had started working their way through the servers, but things were going slowly and with not much else to do, the analyst was slowly getting bored. "Eleven, if you don't count yourself and the dead guy that is still lying around in the apartment."

"Oh, great. So now it's _eleven_ guys..." Benji started, but was interrupted by Skye.

"Don't work yourself up about it," she said. Although her voice wore traces of exhaustion, he could distinctively hear her smile, and it calmed the Brit somewhat. "Don't forget, you're not the only one with doubles running around and at least you don't have to climb through an elevator shaft."

"OK, right," the technician said and took a deep breath to keep himself from starting to talk again.

Going through the building's schematics again, Brandt had found a connection between the elevator shafts and the ventilation system and so Skye now planned to get back into the basement the way he had originally come in, going into another room and later unlocking the server room from the outside. However after Benji had left, the cabin had stayed where it was, and so she had had to pass around it in a small maintenance niche between the two elevator shafts, first going all the way up to get there, and now going all the way down again.

Meanwhile the van had finally reached the apartment. "See you inside," Luther called, before they went off the radio.

Walking up the stairs, Benji couldn't quite believe that it had only been this morning that he had come in with Skye, looking forward to three weeks of relaxed vacation. To him it seemed like that had happened ages ago, but actually it hadn't even been twelve hours yet.

With a sigh he followed Ethan up and waited as the senior agent unlocked the door, when suddenly he rather sensed than otherwise detected someone behind him. Instinctively Benji wanted to turn around, but was held back by a sharp metal object that was held to his neck from behind. "Don't move," a male voice whispered behind him, and a cold shiver ran down his spine when he recognized it. "I told you not to be smart."

"Benji, are you coming?" Ethan asked from inside the flat, but Benji didn't dare to call out to him. That, however, was not necessary, for the other agent was already turning around, to see what was keeping him and instantly had his gun drawn.

For a second the two men just stared at each other, Benji in the middle. Awesome holidays, he thought, as it all suddenly came up again. He had been chased, shot at, had stolen a Royal Mail van and driven it into the Thames, had seen his own death, broken into a building impersonating himself, twice, been beaten up by his own girlfriend, all just to be stabbed now. And somehow all of this was still Nolan's fault. He knew he would have sworn to kill the man, if he hadn't been dead already.

"If you move only one inch, sir, Mr. Dunn dies," Ian Stuart said, almost politely. Ethan didn't move, but he didn't put his gun down either.

"You're not going to kill him," he said calmly, coldly, and with a self-assuredness he did not actually have. "Because you need him alive."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Benji put in with a thin, shaky voice, as Stuart pulled him closer. His back was arched back painfully, as the other man was smaller than he was and as that held him in an uncomfortable, backwards bent position. Where he couldn't give in any more, the knife sharply cut into the soft skin, a wet-warm trickle of fresh blood running down the side of his neck.

"And Mr. Dunn would be right," Stuart said with his predator-grin. "It would be a nice bonus if I could bring him alive, but I'm going to kill him if I have to."

"If you move, you'll be dead," Ethan assured him, but the red-head only smiled back coldly.

"And Mr. Dunn would die anyway," he said, his voice still losing nothing of his English politeness. "Now, if you value your friends life, sir, you should put down your gun."

Grudgingly Ethan lowered his gun and tossed it over. Either Stuart didn't notice that the weapon was still loaded, or maybe he just didn't care. However, he started to shove Benji towards the stairs, making sure that he was still mostly behind the taller man. "And now we thank you for your hospitality, but I'm afraid we have to leave," he said as they started to proceed down the stairs.

Their descend was terribly slow. Stuart didn't loosen his grip and, bent back as he was, Benji was not only rather unsteady on his feet, he also couldn't see all the way down to the floor and had to feel his way around. Additionally he was being pulled sideways and to the right, so that the agent had the constant feeling of falling into the knife. On shaky legs he made his way downstairs, an inch at a time, knowing that any sudden move could be the last. But the stairs were wet and slippery from the rain outside and so a few steps down he missed the edge, slipped and fell.

While his body was instinctively lunging forward to regain balance, his head was ripped back sharply. The only way to get out of this paradox situation without dislocating or breaking any bone-structures, was a sideways rolling motion that sent both men tumbling down the stairs in a tangle of arms and legs.

At some point, Benji noticed that the world around him had stopped moving. His head felt like a pressure-pot, blood pounding in his ears, but shrouded in a strangely lightheaded, floating sensation. Not daring to move, he kept still, waiting for something to happen. It took him a while to realize that he was still alive, lying face-down on cold stone floor. With that realization his senses slowly returned, pain above all, a dull, aching pain in most of his body and a more intense sharp sting just above his neck.

Then he could also hear the voices, laden with concern and fear, although with the noise of his own heartbeat still drumming in his ears he could not understand what they were saying. He tried to reply, but all he managed was a hoarse groan. With the sensation slowly returning into his limbs, he decided it was time to have a look around. Carefully he sorted his arms and legs, and with a larger effort than he would have thought, he turned onto his back.

Opening his eyes, he blinked into the shrill light of a neon lamp. It took a moment until he had oriented himself and could make out that the voices were coming from above. Tilting his head backwards, he could see Ethan and Luther running down the stairs, guns drawn. He still couldn't make out what they were saying. From his strange point of view, lying on the back at the bottom of the stairs, it was however a somewhat surreal sight and made his head spin.

Instantly he closed his eyes again to get rid of the nauseous feeling before it could get worse and thought that it might help his sense of direction if he sat up. Searching for a good spot for his hands to push himself up, he found something strangely soft at his side. Rather out of instinct than anything else, he turned his head to look at it and suddenly stared into horribly contorted face of Ian Stuart.

Startled by the unexpected sight, Benji shrunk back, hitting his head on the wall, but he almost didn't notice. The adrenaline rush elicited by the sudden shock at least lifted the fog from his mind and brought him back to reality. His heart racing, he was leaning against the wall, unable to take his eyes off the deformed figure. Stuart was lying spread-eagled, his head turned away from his body in a grotesque angle, staring at him with cold, dead eyes. He had broken his neck in the fall.

"Benji, are you alright?"

The technician flinched at the touch, but finally managed to look away from the dead man. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said flatly, shaking his head to get the picture out of his mind. Careful not to look back, he sorted his legs and tried to stand up. He only wanted to get away from that scene as quickly as possible, but he was glad that Luther was there to hold him steady. Still, he determinedly walked towards the stairs. On his way up, he noticed a red trail of blood on the steps. He did not think about whose it was.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Skye was glad when she finally reached the end of the ventilation shaft. Although she was smaller than Brandt, after having been tied up for hours, she had not been happy to find herself cramped into the narrow pipeline. With a sigh, she let herself fall out of the ventilation system and stretched her stiff muscles. She did not have the means to pull the grid back over the hole, but that didn't matter much.

Looking around, she found herself back in the maintenance room that had been her prison cell, only that this time she had a way out. Everything was the way they had left it, and actually it was a good thing she had ended up here, she thought. That way she at least knew her way around, even in the darkness. She mused that maybe she should have brought a torch.

Quickly orienting herself, she headed straight for the door and allowed herself a satisfied smile when the skeleton key opened it with an obedient click. Cautiously she looked up and down the corridor before she stepped out, but there was nobody there. She had passed over the server room where Brandt was trapped in the ventilation shafts, so she knew where she had to go and headed straight down the hallway.

The lock on the server room door, other than the one on the maintenance room, was a security lock and somewhat harder to crack, so Skye was still in the middle of working on it, when she heard the soft chime that announced the elevator doors opening. Instinctively Skye pressed herself against the door, although the frame provided very little cover and watched as two versions of Benji, one slightly taller than the other, stepped into the hallway.

However they did not look in her direction, but headed straight for the second door to the right. The door, Skye realized with a cold shiver running down her spine, which was the one that led to the maintenance room she was supposed to be in. She knew she might not even have a second until her absence was discovered and that she had nowhere to run. The corridor ended behind her and to get to the elevators she would have had to get past the maintenance room where she was sure to be seen by the masked men. The chance that any of the doors along the hallway up to that room were unlocked was virtually nonexistent.

Her only chance, she figured, was to get the door of the server room open and hope she could get inside before anybody noticed her. However, when she almost had it, she could hear raised voices from the other end of the corridor and footsteps approaching quickly. They had spotted Skye, and with that, she knew, her time had run out.

She knew her capture was all but inevitable now. She had a gun, and of course she could have shot the two guys, but then they most likely had already called for backup. And even if not, as soon as the bodies would be found, and someone was bound to find them, they would know about their operation. Also it would not increase her chances to stay unseen for long.

If she let herself be captured, however, she might still be able to make them believe she had managed to escape her prison all on her own. She made that decision in within a second, but meanwhile the men had spotted her and were coming straight at her.

Her foremost objective now was damage control. She had three things on her that might give her away. The first was the earplug. Of course there was a chance it might not be noticed, however if they did find it, she would have no chance of explaining it away, so she simply ripped it out and threw it on the floor.

The skeleton key was somewhat harder to get rid of, but since the bare stone corridor didn't give Skye any possibility of throwing it away, she decided to instead hide it in a place she just hoped none of them would ever look. The last and biggest problem was presented by the gun, but by the time she got to think about it, the two men were only one door away, and even if she had a way to let the weapon disappear, she knew that she hardly could do that without either of them noticing. She would have to solve that problem on the way.

Since there was no space to escape between them and the wall, she had only two options: Either back up against the wall and let herself be captured, or attack, with the minute chance that she might even be able to take them down and find somewhere to hide before their backup arrived, without being shot in the process. Skye decided that if she would be captured, after all she could at least give them a good fight.

Determined she lunged at them, ramming her shoulder into the one on her right, while grabbing his leg, so he sailed to the floor behind her before he even knew what was happening. The second man was meanwhile reaching for his gun, but Skye twisted it out of his hand in a move that shifted some structures in his wrist into relative positions to each other they were not naturally meant to be in. In the same flowing motion, she bent his arm to his back, tripping him over her right foot which rammed him face first into the wall with her left knee in his back.

However she had not thought that her other attacker would recover as quickly as he did, so in the same instant she was grabbed by the shoulder and did not completely manage to avoid a blow that, had it hit home, would have broken more than just her nose. The man already prepared for a second blow, but Skye recovered quickly and grabbed his elbow with both hands, her fingers tightening around the pressure spot that made his arm bend. Once it did, she yanked him down, stepping to the side, and he followed his colleague with a painful groan. The sound made her skin crawl, it sounded too much like Benji himself. With a deep breath she told herself that that was completely impossible and that it was only a voice chip, and the masks coming away in strips from the men's crushed faces helped a bit.

Skye had been distracted for only a moment, however that had been a moment too long, for she had missed the chime of the elevator and suddenly four more men, more than six feet tall each and at least half as much in width, came at her. Before she was able to react, one of them seized her by the arm and lifted her up. She managed to kick him squarely in the chest, but that didn't seem to impress him much, nor did anything else she could do. Calmly he forcefully folded her arms behind her back, while one of the others wrapped her in duct-tape, despite her best efforts to resist. Once she nearly came close enough his shoulder to bite him, an act of desperation, which had her end up with a piece of tape across her mouth, carried away over his shoulder in a writhing bundle. Nobody took special notice of the discarded gun lying a few feet from the two unconscious bodies.


	11. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Brandt was startled up by an electronic shriek in his right ear that made his teeth hurt. He was much too familiar with that sound that told of some piece of broken radio equipment, and the noise of fighting outside the door that followed only made him more concerned, but at least it gave him some idea of what was going on. After all there was only one of them out there.

"Darkhorse, come in," he asked nevertheless, just to be sure, although he didn't actually think that there would be a reply, and he was right. The fighting outside stopped as abruptly as it had started, and he tried again. "Darkhorse, do you copy?" His voice was still calm, but now with a certain, concerned edge to it. And still there was no reply.

In fact, there was absolutely nothing, the radio had fallen completely silent, which, considering that Ethan, Luther and Benji should all still be listening in, was more than a little concerning, but he didn't want to give in to the thought that the connection might actually be dead. The idea of being stuck alone in a room, where he could be discovered any moment, in a building full of people who were not likely to treat him nicely, without any connection to the outside world, was not appealing.

"Anybody, do you read?" Brandt asked, and started pacing the room in nervous strides. Of course they did not, otherwise someone should have said something already. That silence was even more horrible than the fact that there was no answer from Skye, which he had expected and he was positive that the connection was still active and unjammed. So what had happened out there that was keeping all of them from answering? "Anybody, come in!"

"I read you, Brandt," Luther replied, a little out of breath. When they had entered the room he had noticed the radio call and, hearing the more than obvious concern in the other agent's voice, he had simply dumped Benji on one of the sofas. "I'm sorry," he said. "We had a bit of trouble of our own."

"What happened?" Ethan asked, who had just entered the room behind the others.

"That's a good question," Brandt replied dryly. "It seems that Skye is off the radio, but that's about all I know." He bit his tongue before he could add something about being stuck in a room, but nevertheless his displeasure was obvious.

Meanwhile Luther had called up the camera feeds of the last few minutes and swallowed. "They've captured Skye."

"We've got to do something!" Benji explained, mentally jumping up, which his body translated into a rather slow, staggering motion. Before he had completed it, he was gently pushed back down on the sofa by Ethan.

"We will do something," the older agent replied, taking a closer look at the jagged gash that ran from under his chin up his jaw and ended somewhere behind his ear. "But first, that cut needs stitching and we need a plan."

"A plan for what exactly?" Brandt asked, adding: "Do we know anything yet about what they are up to?"

Luther sighed. "I hate to say it, but I've been skimming through that data we've collected from the server, and if I'm interpreting it correctly, then they are going to infiltrate the IMF."

"Is that even possible?" Benji asked, trying to look at Luther, but Ethan gently, yet firmly pushed his head back into a tipped back position so he could go on cleaning away the partially dried blood with antiseptic.

"Hell, I don't know," Luther said, shaking his head. "I hope not, but they sure seem to think so."

"But we've alerted HQ, right?" Brandt put in. "You said backup's on the way. If D.C. knows what Clarkson Enterprises is up to, they can warn everyone in question and cross their plans before they do something serious."

Ethan listened while he finished the few stitches he had placed and covered everything up with a slim, long piece of band-aid. "That's not going to be enough," he said and regarded his work one last time before he faced the others. "Just think: In our line of work we have to be paranoid by nature, yet every agent has to be able to rely on and trust the agent next to him, to trust the people who chose that agent, to trust the system behind it. Now if the word gets out there that someone has attempted to infiltrate the IMF and we don't know how far they got, people will not be unaffected. Even if we manage to stop them, before they can do any serious damage, the idea alone that something like this might be possible will put everyone on edge and that would ultimately cause a lot of chaos. It took us long enough to recover from Ghost Protocol, the Syndicate and the CIA, we can't risk something like that happening again."

A stunned silence slowly filled the room that was only broken when Benji winced silently. He had tried to carefully turn his head, but found that beyond a certain degree that was not necessarily a good idea. "So what do we do now?" he asked, now that all eyes were on him anyway, looking from one to the other.

"We stop them," Luther said matter-of-factly, but in the next sentence brought up the problem himself. "But we still don't have any details about exactly what they are going to do or might have done already, so the question is how."

"Luther, am I correct in assuming that the main part of whatever they have planned is still in the Roman Tower?" Ethan asked, looking at neither of them. He was staring at some invisible point in mid-air, and Benji recognized a glint in his eyes that showed he was on to something.

"I guess so," Luther replied with a shrug. "I can't say anything for sure, especially as we don't have any details about their actual plans, but I'd say it's a good guess."

"That makes it pretty simple," Ethan said, more to himself, cocking his head as if he was surprised at how easy it all suddenly seemed to be. Not that anyone else saw it that way, but then they all were used to that by now.

"And how?" Brandt asked nevertheless.

However Ethan was already explaining: "We close the doors. Lock them into their own building, until our backup arrives. Luther, how much of that server-data do you have already?"

"Lots," the technician replied. "Just haven't had the time to view it all yet. One more hour, maybe two, and we'll have a complete copy of those servers."

Benji's face lit up as he grasped the details of what Ethan had suggested. "So we go in there, seal the exits, make sure that they don't delete or alter anything before we have the complete data, and when the cavalry arrives, they'll hand the whole package over to the CIA, who will lock them all away as terrorists for the attempt to infiltrate a federal agency," he summed it up and the older agent nodded. Benji allowed himself a small smile. "Neat."

"That still doesn't explain exactly how you want to do that," Brandt put in.

"Well, we already got you in the server room, so that one's secure," Benji said with a shrug, which he regretted immediately, but he didn't let it show. "That means we only have to take care of the doors."

"I'm not going to stay here for another six hours," Brandt replied, more than just annoyed, although he right well knew that unless someone got him out he wouldn't have much of a choice.

"We'll get you out," Ethan brushed the topic away and came to a, for him, more important matter. "How many doors are there?"

"Apart from the main entrance, there's one service entrance at the back, going down into the basement, and three emergency exits: One on the ground floor left of the elevators, one from a maintenance corridor that joins ground floor and basement which is basically accessible only through the elevator-shafts, and one from the emergency staircase that is completely separated from the rest of the building and connects all floors but ground floor and basement. That makes it five doors over all," Luther counted. "The hardest would most likely be the ones on the main entrance, but I think the bigger question is how do we get them locked in a way that they won't be able to open them?"

"I might have an idea for that," Benji said, already rummaging in a closet that he had opened in a spot where formerly there had been only a blank wall. Triumphantly he reappeared with what looked like a box of WD-40 cans, complete with the obligatory red straw, which earned him curious glances from the other men present.

"This is a new generation of super-glue that has just come out of prototype phase," he explained. "Nicely camouflaged as machine oil, as you can see, and not to be confused with the real stuff. A little of that into lock, hinges and other moving parts should render any door stuck for good. You should only try to not get anything on you, the stuff that is supposed to dissolve it is not fully developed yet."

"That might actually work," Luther commented approvingly, and summed up the plan once more: "So we go in, find Skye, get Brandt, seal the doors and get out of the last one. Only, who goes in?"

Benji shrugged. "I could go. After all that has worked so far."

"But it's not going to work anymore," Ethan countered. "With that cut no one would believe you that you're one of them wearing a mask now."

Benji had to admit he was right, but he was not going to give up that easily. "Well, I could wear a mask," he put in. "Of myself."

"You're not going to want to wear a mask over that, believe me," Luther said, and Benji was inclined to believe him. It already hurt enough as it was without a constant cover of tight latex over it.

"I'll go in," Ethan decided meanwhile. It was the only logical alternative.

"But you can hardly walk in there as yourself," Luther pointed out. "We have to expect that they have files on all of us and they'll pick you out faster than Benji, if you do that."

"Don't worry, I'm not planning on doing that. I'll go as Stuart." There was a moment of baffled silence, until Benji spoke up.

"That's even more crazy," he said. "I mean, sure, we can pull a mask off that guy's face, but we've got absolutely no data for a voice chip. If anybody talks to you, you're screwed."

"Not necessarily. I'll go in old style," Ethan replied with a mild smile. "We've been using masks long before voice chips ever came up. And yes, Benji, I am that old," he added at the technician's incredulous stare.

Luther didn't look any less worried than before. "Still, usually you had days or at least hours for preparation back then, with loads of video footage. You're running a hell of a risk, doing it like that. I don't like it."

"Does anyone have a better idea?" Ethan asked, although it was obvious that there was none. Still, he let the silence linger a bit, before he sighed. "I don't really like this either, but it's the best shot we've got, and we might be running out of time any moment."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Skye had stopped struggling a while ago. After catching her in the basement, the security guards had carried her into an office and forced her onto a chair. Wrapped up tightly in duct-tape, all she had managed was falling off said chair and that had not helped her in any way. She had spent some time on her own, then had been questioned by a version of herself with a horribly bad temper. Although she was sure that this person had been wearing a mask, it had been the probably weirdest experience of her life.

The woman had been asking all sorts of questions, to which, of course, she had not replied, using all kinds of threats and promises to make her answer. At some point Skye had simply tuned out, however she had picked up that the last threat had been one of physical violence that went beyond the occasional slap in the face, which she now wanted to make true. Obviously she did not want to ruin the carpet of her office in the process, for the agent found herself being dragged through the hallway by one of the gorillas, who were following their boss towards the elevators.

Skye tried to ignore the pain in her shoulder that was elicited by the way the security guard held her by the arm, and made herself as stiff as she could in order to make the way most of her body was trailing on the floor as bearable as possible. Still, by the time they reached the elevator, her knees and feet, especially the bony parts, were beaten black and blue by the floor, and she was sure that it wouldn't take long until something in her arm or shoulder was dislocated. All of that was forgotten, however, when the doors of the elevator slid apart and she suddenly stared into Benji's face.

Her eyes widened in shock at the sight of her boyfriend, who was dragged along in a similar fashion as herself, with the difference that only his hands were bound, it seemed, with a tie. His legs were free, yet he was unable to pick them up and his feet were trailing behind. His body was dangling limply from where he was held firmly by the arm, and he appeared to just managed to keep his head from drooping. Skye was relieved that he seemed to be at least somewhat conscious, although his eyes were nearly closed and blood was streaming down his face from somewhere on his forehead, mostly on the left side.

The man who held him was rather small, wrapped in a long black coat that obstructed his body-features. His pale skin, looking nearly white in the cold light of the elevator, was a stark contrast to astonishingly dark shade of red of his short hair. Despite the considerable difference in size, he seemed to have no problem carrying his load.

"Stuart." The woman said it neither as a greeting, nor a question, simply as a statement, as if she had nothing else to say.

The man looked from the woman who had spoken to Skye and back, until he noticed the ID-card dangling from her neck. He seemed surprised. "Miss Ferret?"

"Oh, of course you don't recognize me," she said, her voice frosty, as if he should have, anyway. Then, more interested, she looked at his cargo, raising and eyebrow. "So you actually caught him?" The way she said it made clear that this didn't raise her obviously low estimate of Stuart.

"He was in the apartment." The voice was definitely British, although Skye couldn't place it anywhere specifically. It was as cold as that of the woman and she could almost hear the crackle of tension between them. It's thin sharpness fit very well with his predator smile, yet, although she was sure she had never heard it before, there was a certain edge to it that scratched at her subconscious mind. It confused her even more when she caught his glance as he looked back at her. "What about the girl?"

"Ah, she's a hard case. Very tough. Very silent," Ferret said, sugarcoating Skye's voice until it dripped with fake friendliness. "I was about to use some more _convincing_ methods, however thanks to your guest, I believe that is not going to be necessary. At least not right now."

"I'd like to ask her a few questions, anyway," Stuart said, and the copy of Skye just shrugged.

"Do whatever you want," she said, waving to her lackey. The gorilla practically threw her over to the other man, who just managed to catch her by the shoulder. For that he had to let go of Benji, who fell to the floor like a bag of sand. She flinched at the sight, but he didn't even groan. It looked as if by now he had passed out completely, when the goon picked him up. "Just be careful there's something left of her when you're done, in case we still need her," Ferret said, before the elevator doors closed.

Skye felt the usual tug of the elevator going downwards, but very shortly afterwards it stopped again. The doors didn't open. Stuart had let go of her and she managed to stay in a somewhat kneeling position, steadying herself against the wall. Next to her head, she heard the snap of a pocket knife. Half surprised, half curious and with a hint of fear, she turned to the man, who smiled back. Not in the predator-like smile of before, but in a way that seemed to belong to someone else.

"Agent Holt," said a voice that was completely different, American, warm, calm, and most of all, familiar. And suddenly she knew where that slight edge had come from that she hadn't been able to place earlier. While her mind still put the pieces into place, the man moved behind her, cutting through the tape that had held her hands behind her back, then proceeding to the ties around her legs.

Relieved she pulled the one stripe of tape from her mouth that had held her mouth shut, and stated what by now was obvious: "Agent Hunt."


	12. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

As soon as Ethan and Benji had vanished through the tall glass doors, Luther came around the corner. He was wearing the dirty beige overalls of a workman, so nobody paid any particular attention to him. No one inside or outside looked at him as he stopped near the tall glass doors, neither as he set down and opened his toolbox, nor as he took out the blue can with the red straw and the yellow writing.

Like Benji had instructed, he shook the can well before he reached up to the door's hinges, using his toolbox as a step. The red straw fit nicely into the gap in the mechanics and for a moment Luther was wondering whether he didn't actually have a can of machine-oil, but there was only one way to find out. Carefully he started to press onto the top of the can, until thick, dirty-yellow liquid started to flow out, immediately starting to solidify. So Benji at least hadn't been wrong about his miracle stuff.

With the calm, professional air of someone who was doing what he was supposed to, Luther went on to the other three hinges of the tall double-doors. Once done, he gave the two wings a good push, but the once movable slabs of glass were now a solid barrier. With a satisfied smile, the technician packed up his toolbox and went on around the corner. "Main entrance sealed. One down, four to go."

"Great for you. At the current rate it will still be one hour and thirty-eight minutes until the data transfer is completed," Brandt replied not without a trace of sarcasm. With a sigh he went back to pacing up and down in the server room. "No word yet from the others."

"So if we lock up everyone in this building, how do we get out?" Skye asked, putting in the ear-piece Ethan had given her. While she had gotten rid of the last traces of duct-tape, the older agent had explained in a few short sentences, what was going on and what they were planning to do, only that the Dane hat gradually formed the idea that their plan was not so much a plan, but a compilation of corner-stones with a lot of gaps in between.

"We'll think of something," Ethan confirmed her suspicion and handed her a gun, which she tucked into her belt, hiding it under her shirt.

"I thought as much," Skye replied with an amused smile. "What about Benji?"

"Don't worry, most of that was paint and acting, and he's got everything he needs to get out," Ethan answered in the most convincing way he could muster, but the other agent was not convinced.

"Most of that?" she asked and couldn't help a bit of concern showing through.

"He'll be fine," Ethan added somewhat more reassuringly.

Not sure what to say, Skye decided to let the matter rest. Also she was distracted by the last item of equipment that the still masked man pulled out of his jacket. It looked like an ordinary oil can, however it could hardly be just that, or he wouldn't have brought it along. Still she gave it a doubtful look. "What is that?"

"It's some sort of new super-glue, Benji thought it might be useful. Just try not to get any of it onto you, we don't have anything to dissolve it yet," Ethan explained and she tucked it away in her pocket.

"So, what do we do now?"

"Now we'll get Brandt out of the server room," he said and took a deep breath before he went on. "And then, we'll see."

Skye raised her eyebrows, but she had already suspected most of this was going to work out in a 'take it as it comes'-scheme.

"You still have the key?" Ethan asked and she nodded. "Alright," he said activating his radio. "We're set. How are things going outside?"

"I've got the main entrance and the back-door sealed. About to start with the emergency exit from the upper levels," Luther reported almost immediately. He couldn't help ironically shaking his head when Brandt chimed in.

"And I'm still stuck in the basement, thanks."

"Any word from Benji yet?" Ethan decided to ignore the last comment.

"I thought he was supposed to be with you?" Luther asked back with only the slightest trace of surprise.

"We had to split up. I'm running with Skye now, but we'll proceed as planned from here," the other agent replied. "So he hasn't called in yet?"

"No, he hasn't," Brandt answered in turn, while calling up the hallway and elevator cameras. "And the basement seems to be clear, as far as I can see."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"This is going nowhere!" Although the woman in front of Benji had the same voice as Skye, it wasn't hard to tell that that voice was synthesized, for it was not only lacking the slight foreign quality her Danish upbringing added to her otherwise British accent, Lydia also managed to give it a shrill, high-pitched note, that made the agent's ears hurt. The fact that his ears were still practically drowned only added to the headache that was elicited by the sharp clicking of her heels on the polished linoleum, by now he was sure that his adversary was well aware of that effect and deliberately wore these shoes as a method of torture.

Still, Benjamin Dunn was pleased that so far he was able to disappoint her. He had been afraid that his fake injuries might wash off, when someone threw a bucket load of water over his head, but all that happened was that the most superficial layer of sticky, dark-red theater blood was distributed more evenly over his hair and face, which, after he had somehow managed not to cough, only aided him in playing his role as the unconscious captive. And now it seem his acting was finally paying off.

Another slap of a huge, strong hand hit him right on in the face, yet it was the sound of Lydia stomping, the plastic heel meeting the hard floor in a noise that made his mouth itch, which almost had him flinch. "That's enough!" Ferret's voice sounded dull through the water in his ears, although by now he was almost thankful that they were still flooded, for he had realized that without the distorting effect of the water the experience might well have been worse. "It seems he's not going to wake up any time soon, and I don't have the time to stand around and wait until he comes to. Let's see if Ian has come any further with this annoying little girl."

Benji was relieved when the sharp clicking finally moved away, accompanied by two sets of heavier steps, and ended with the clang of a door. For a moment he waited and listened, but as all stayed silent, he carefully opened his eyes, blinking against the sticky fake blood. He could not see much of the room with thick, wet strands falling into his face, but it was enough to ascertain that he was definitely alone. Swiftly he slipped his hands out of the tie that had been pretending to hold them behind his back and within seconds had managed to untie the rope that had been holding him on the chair.

While he was fetching his radio ear-piece out of his pocket with one hand, he rubbed the other one over his eyes, in an attempt to clear his view and his face, but apart from slicking back the few loose strands all he managed was to redden his sleeve. "Benji here, I'm free," he announced, once he had the small piece of electronics in the right place.

"You sure took your time, man," Luther voice promptly came back. "We were already getting worried."

The British agent snorted sarcastically. "Well, I didn't want to try to take on Lydia and two of her gorillas while being tied to a chair."

"Uhm, Ethan?" Benji's voice that was actually Brandt's still sounded weird in Skye's ears, especially with the American accent and was more than a little concerned. Without waiting for a response the analyst continued: "There's someone in the elevator, and they are coming down here."

"Go back?" Skye asked softly, shooting a glance back at the elevator doors that were by now half a corridor length away, then directing her questioning look at Ethan.

The older agent shook his head. "No time," he explained, breaking into a run. "We'll get to Brandt and hope we're fast enough so they don't see us."

"Only one question," Brandt replied, following their conversation. "If you're all in here with me, who will get us out? And they are almost in the basement, by the way."

"We'll think of something," Ethan replied as Skye threw him the skeleton key, then turned to cover him while he was opening the door, her drawn gun pointed towards the elevator.

"Why do I not find that reassuring?" Brandt muttered sarcastically, then louder and in a voice that was beyond desperation, added: "They are here."

In exactly that moment, the elevator doors opened, letting out Lydia and the two goons who had already been with her earlier. Skye only hesitated for a split second, but it was enough to effectively ruin the moment of surprise, which had been her only advantage.

Cursing, the agent scolded herself, it had been to be expected that their adversaries would be wearing masks, and ducked into the thin cover of the door-frame, as the sound of gunshots echoed through the hallway, accompanied by a shrill version of her own voice shouting orders. She managed to fire a couple of shots herself, and hit one of them twice, enough to take the man down, but by the time she could have adjusted her aim for the other, the goon was already upon her.

Changing her tactic, Skye drew back her weapon-hand, swinging the firearm at her opponent like a sledgehammer. Although the man was surprised by the woman jumping at him like a wild cat, he managed to mostly dodge that first blow, but not the almost as powerful backhand that returned like a boomerang and hit him square in the neck. Before he hit the floor, however, Skye pulled up her right knee, which sent the goon rolling, with a look on his face as if he was about to throw up.

Caught up in her fight, Skye almost missed the soft click that told of the opening door, and was somewhat surprised when she was suddenly pulled backwards. Not a second too late, for a bullet suddenly whizzed through the air exactly where she had been standing. She had completely forgotten about Lydia.

Just as that eerie copy of herself was about to come in, however, the door was thrown shut right in front of Skye, and the last thing she heard of her evil twin, was a soft, yet solid thud on the metal of the door.

"That was weird," a voice said from across the room. Skye tensed at the view of the man with Benji's face that looked somehow lopsided, as if he was wearing a second skin that had somehow lost its place. Which, of course, he was. It took her a moment to realize this was actually Brandt she was looking at.

"You don't say," she replied flatly and took a look around the room. It was dark, save for the dim light from monitors and diodes that illuminated the room in a ghostly electric blue glow. Behind her, Ethan was tearing down the leftovers of his mask, which had obviously been damaged in the fight.

"So, what now?" Brandt asked, also removing his lopsided cover. "Now that all of us are in here, who's going to open that door?"

"Now that all of us are in here, I think we can manage to get one of us out through the vent shaft," Ethan replied, looking up at the grid Brandt had come through earlier. Both of the other agents followed his look rather less enthusiastically.


	13. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

"Four down, one to go," Luther murmured with some satisfaction as he proceeded to the one emergency exit he had yet to seal. Up to now no one had taken any notice of him. It was always surprising how in the eyes of the public wearing a workman's overall gave you the authority to do anything. Not that there were a lot of people around the back of the building, especially at this time of day.

He had just set up his tool box, when he felt the soft buzz of his cellphone notifier in his pocket. With a sigh he pulled out the device. Alarmingly red writing was already screaming at him from the lock screen, revealing the details once he had identified himself. He didn't like what he saw.

"Brandt, what's going on?" he asked, trying to sound annoyed rather than concerned. "The connection is down. Completely."

"We've had a bit of a fight down here," Brandt replied. With his own voice, Luther noted, not the computer generated image of Benji's. "One of the servers might have taken a bullet. Or two."

Luther cursed silently. Without the upload completed, their plan would be pretty much screwed. And right now they were still not even almost there. But he still had one joker up his sleeve. "Benji? Can you fix it?"

Benji stepped out into the hallway and tried to orient himself, blinking away the mixture of water and fake blood that still kept running down his face. "Maybe I could," he replied, staring down the corridor. "But I'm nowhere near there. I don't even know what floor I'm on."

"Alright, then I'll go in," Luther decided. Benji knew it was the best thing to do, but there was protest from the others.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Brandt put in. "If you come in, then either we have an open door, or you seal it from inside, which would mean, we won't get back out."

"The only one that's still open is that small exit from the maintenance shafts between ground floor and basement," Luther argued. "And it looks pretty unused. I don't even think they know it exists. I'll come in. Period."

Meanwhile Benji had made sure the hallway was empty and proceeded in the direction of the elevators, when he spotted a familiar sign on a door at the end of the corridor. "In the meantime I'll try to do some reroute from here."

"You can do that?" two voices asked at once, surprised.

"Uh, maybe," the technician replied, not wanting to be premature. "And it'll take some time."

"Give it a try," Luther answered. Unnecessarily, for Benji had already decided to go ahead with it anyway. Quickly he covered the distance to the door in question before anyone could spot him, and knocked politely. There was no reason for running in doors, unless he needed to, but when there was no reply he turned the handle and found it was locked. Neil must have gone home already.

It took the agent mere seconds to pick the lock and soon enough he was inside and closed the door. The room was eerily dark without the familiar dim glow of screens and diodes, but he quickly found the main electrical switch, as well as the computer's power button. He sat back and started looking through the drawers, while he watched the boot-up sequence. In the very back of one he found a stash of Mars bars. The young Scot surely wouldn't mind.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Once it had become clear that Luther would come in anyway, Skye had refused to climb back into the ventilation system, as had Brandt, and so both of them were waiting with Ethan for the door to open, guns ready.

It was Luther who finally came in. He had decided to open the door once and for all by taking out the lock, partially because he didn't have any lock picks or skeleton key he could have used. Lydia, meanwhile, was gone, leaving only a dark smear on the door where she had impacted earlier.

"Let's have a look at this mess you've made," he announced as he stepped into the room and proceeded to the damaged computer right away.

"Nice to see you, too," Brandt muttered, trying to sound sarcastic, but his relief was far too obvious.

"How does it look?" Ethan asked glancing over Luther's shoulder, who had knelt down next to the huge computer and already removed part of the casing.

"Bad," was the one-word reply he got back.

"Can you repair it?" he returned the obvious question.

"No," Luther stated, half turning to underline his apparent annoyance. "I can't fix it. But I might be able to rig something up if you give me some space and quiet and let me work."

"Well, then let's get out of here," Brandt put in, maybe a bit too enthusiastically, already starting for the door with Skye not far behind.

"Wait!" Ethan stopped them. "We shouldn't split up. By now they know that we are around, probably they are looking for us already. We have lost the element of surprise and we can't blend in with them anymore either. And since Ms. Ferret is not lying in front of that door anymore, I think they are going to show up here sooner rather than later, while we are severely outnumbered and out-gunned. If we want to get out of this, we've got to stick together."

"What about Benji?" Skye asked, visibly concerned, but her boyfriend chimed in immediately.

"I'm alright," he said, astonishingly cheerful. "I got the door locked. They're not gonna surprise me if they get in, and I'd be in the better position. Besides I don't think they'll figure out I'm here."

"Alright," Ethan decided that it would have to suffice. "But you stay there and call for backup at the first sign of trouble." There was an affirmative reply from Benji, and the team leader continued: "Can you tap into the building's mainframe and give us a bit more control? Elevators, doors, anything?"

"We already have a connection for the cameras, but tapping into anything else would take time, which I think is better used on our main computer problem," the Brit explained, and defensively added: "It's not so much my work time, but the fact that after the damage you did down there I'm already overtaxing all the systems, so to implement, say, an elevator override quickly enough to be of any use, I'd have to shut down all the current upload processes completely and that would throw us back ages."

"OK, then I guess we'll do this the old fashioned way," Ethan announced. "Brandt, you'll monitor the security feeds of the elevators, it's the only warning we have of anyone approaching. Skye, we'll secure the hallway."

Grudgingly the analyst disappeared back behind the video screens, while the other two agents stepped out into the corridor.

"So, how does it look?" Benji asked, once the other radio-chatter had died.

"Not good," Luther replied with a frown. "The hard drive of the main server is busted. Everything else seems to be only cable damage that I can probably patch, but without the drive we can forget that computer. Maybe you can reroute our data somewhere?"

"I've already set up a secondary upload protocol," the Brit replied, but he didn't sound happy. "However I had to make that up with so many processes and sub-processes that this way it's going to take us forever, simply because it's taking up so much processing power."

"So you're telling me, without the main upload server we're screwed," Luther summed up their situation.

"Basically yes," Benji agreed. "But maybe you could rig one of the other computers to take over for the main server. I've got all the settings and server protocols in a backup right here."

"That might work," Luther replied and inspected the computer more closely. "Only someone would have to rewire the network connection, and that's not in here."

"I'll do it," Brandt volunteered immediately.

But Benji broke the analyst's enthusiasm: "You wouldn't know what to do."

"No, but you could tell me," Brandt replied, not giving up on his chance to get out of the server room just yet.

"It's not as easy as that," Benji sighed. "I won't even know what to do myself until I see it, so unless one of you happens to have a pair of visco-glasses lying around I'll have to do it myself."

"You shouldn't go alone," Ethan stated, but Skye didn't need that reminder.

"I'll go with you," she decided in a voice that made clear she wouldn't accept a no. "Where are you?"

"Tenth floor," Benji replied and couldn't quite keep the grin out of his voice. "There's an IT-room at the end of the corridor. Can't miss it."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The silent knock on the door didn't startle Benji, for he had been waiting for just that, yet he did take his gun when he went to open it, just in case. Outside, however, was only Skye. He suppressed the urge to hug her, knowing he was still fairly wet and sticky all over with theater blood, but washed away her worried look with a cheerful smile.

Still Holt noticed the fairly long stripe of formerly white band-aid, now shining in a washed-out pink thanks to the red paint, that covered the stitches along his neck. "What happened there?" she asked, softly running her finger over it, to see how far it was going.

"Long story. It's not that bad," he added, not wanting to spook her any more right now with the story of how he had come by that and carefully tilted away his head. "Let's get going, shall we?"

Skye nodded her approval and watched the hallway, while he locked the door, before they headed for the elevator. They didn't encounter anyone on their way there. In fact, Benji had a feeling that all the offices they passed were empty. "Where are we going?" Skye asked once they were inside the elevator.

"Ground floor," Benji replied, his finger already hovering millimeters away from the respective button, when Brandt's voice cut him short.

"Wait a moment. You're saying that whatever you have to do is in that entrance hall?"

"I guess so. Since there's not much else on that floor, the access panel has to be somewhere there," Benji replied, and Brandt suppressed a sigh.

"You might want to take a look at the cameras. From what I can tell the room is crawling with people."

Leaving the button where it was for now, Benji pulled the phone out of his jacket's inner pocket, where it had mysteriously stayed dry together with his gun. Opening the feed that tapped into the security cameras, he immediately saw what Brandt was referring to. The camera in front of the elevator had a relatively small pickup area, but there alone he could make out five people and it was a safe guess that there were more in the large part of the room they couldn't see.

"What now?" Skye asked, leaning over his arm to get a glimpse of the picture. But when she looked at Benji's face, the glimmer in his eyes told her that he already had an idea.

"Did Ethan give you one of those spray cans?" he asked, and his smile grew even brighter when she nodded affirmatively.

Still Skye did not yet comprehend his plan. "Yes, why?"

"Back when I was working in the tech lab, we had this ongoing thing about coming up with new non-lethal weapons, and there was a sort of contest about knocking out as many people as possible at once. Most of them never made it past planning stage. My favorite managed to make it into prototype stage, but then was ruled out as being too impractical. Too bad actually, because the principle is quite simple," he explained, while sealing the cap of the spray-can she had given him with a piece of tape. Then he started shaking it vigorously, while Skye was still puzzled. With his best little-child-on-Christmas-eve-grin, he finished: "We called it a glue grenade."

"So you want to make this explode?" she asked, just to be clear and Benji nodded.

"The glue in the can is under pressure, which compresses it to a gas. Additionally there's a propellant mixed in, like for example in hair-spray, which usually is highly inflammable. Subjected to normal pressure, the combination should make a nice aerosol," he continued his explanation. "I'll throw the can straight into the middle of the room, you give it your best shot, and with a little luck the stuff will spread through most of the hall before it's dry."

"Sounds like a plan," she replied, mainly because she didn't have a better one. They both only had their nine-millimeter guns, and even if her clip had still been full, they probably wouldn't have had much more than one bullet for each goon waiting on the other side of those elevator doors. Without knowing exactly how many there were and where each of them was, taking all of them down fast enough would have been impossible. This way at least they had a chance of avoiding a bloody mayhem.

After counting the bullets she still had left, Skye shoved the clip back in with an audible click, releasing the security and loading the chamber in the same motion. "Ready when you are."


	14. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

The oil can rolled over the marble floor with a soft clank that was not noticed by many and paid no attention to by most of the others. Only three people had had the good idea, most likely inspired by former military training, to lie down or duck behind something, but even they were lured out again by curiosity a second later, when nothing happened instantly. By the time someone looked in the direction of the elevator, where the can had come from, the bullet had already left the barrel.

The sound of the gunshot finally drew the attention of all the people in the room, but the projectile was already on its way and wouldn't be stopped any more. Cutting through the air, it unwaveringly followed the course it had been sent on until it hit metal. Piercing the soft shell of the spray-can, it released the pressure inside to the outside, subjecting the sterile interior to the mix of oxygen and nitrogen that made up most of the air in the room.

Catalyzed by the heat of the bullet, the propellant reacted with the outside air, bursting the rest of the can and hurling the aerosol particles in every direction, before they settled as a fine fog.

Skye and Benji pressed themselves against the opposite walls of the elevator, holding their breath while silently counting down the seconds until the glue would have dried, before they stepped into the hall. The few lucky individuals who had escaped most of the sticky fog had taken just as long to recover from their surprise and were coming at them from the opposite corners, but the agents disposed of them rapidly.

Looking around in the room, Benji saw an astonishing amount of blond people that made his head spin and his skin crawl, so he quickly focused on finding the panel he was looking for and getting to work. Skye didn't feel any better, but forced herself to search the room for any possible dangers. All in all, she counted eight versions of herself and five copies of Benji, plus several ordinary security guards. One very unlucky fellow in the center of the room seemed to have inhaled lots of the glue-gas-mixture.

Although he seemed to be glued well in place, he looked at her in a wide-eyed, panicked way, emitting half coughing, half retching noises with an underlying note of suffocation. Mercifully Skye decided to relieve him of his struggle. She was glad he was not wearing a mask.

"And the upload is back on full strength," Luther's voice was beaming with relief and a bit of pride. "If it stays like this, the upload should be finished in twenty minutes, thirty at most."

"Good job," Ethan said, acknowledging. "But you two now better come down here."

"On our way," Benji replied as he followed Skye into the elevator. His voice was muffled by the finger he had in his mouth, which he kept there to keep it from hurting where he had cut himself on the raw copper wire. The salty taste of blood and sweat also helped to get the stale note of rubber insulation off his tongue.

Only moments later, the elevator doors opened with a soft hiss, and the two agents suddenly found themselves face to face with three of their adversaries. They seemed to be just as surprised as they came out of the other elevator, but also recovered as quickly. For Benji it was as if he was looking into a cracked mirror, seeing his own face look back, but twice. More on Skye's height was Lydia Ferret.

Now back in her own face, the CEO of Clarkson Enterprises was sporting a somewhat more flat nose, with lots of dried blood around it, showing where it had met the door. Skye intended to rub it in a little deeper, but although she was a split second quicker, Lydia managed to dodge her blow and grabbed the agent by the arm, using the force of the swing to pull her down. Surprised by her opponents agility, Skye was almost overtaken, but in her desperate attempt to keep her balance, she managed to get hold of Ferret's hair, pulling the other woman down with her in a screaming bundle.

In their fall, however, Skye did not see the small knife Lydia suddenly had, and although it only scratched the skin on her arm, it was enough to make her let go, if only out of self-preservation. Still, the agent recovered more quickly, and in standing up she rammed her foot into the other woman's right shoulder, giving he no chance to use her weapon again, and effectively breaking several bones. Giving no quarter, she added an angry blow to the head that hit straight home, and a kick in the ribs for good measure.

Panting, she took her bearings, but there was no time to recover. Benji had done a good job, too. One of his doppelgängers was lying dead or unconscious in the door of the second elevator, however he had not managed to hold off the other one completely. Too late, Skye saw the fist coming in her direction, but just as it would have hit her face it was pulled away and before she could figure out what was going on, both men were on the floor, trying to wrestle the other one down.

In the rolling mess of arms and legs, fake blood mingling with real blood, it was impossible for Holt to tell where one man ended and the other one begun, and even less who was who. She had her gun drawn, and knew she still had two bullets left, one more than she would need to kill the man. But afraid to hit Benji instead, she could only watch helplessly, unable to tell what was going on, when suddenly everything went dark.

In the middle of the darkness, there was a sound of breaking bones and ripping tissue, accompanied by an agonizing shriek, but with the lights out there was even less Skye could do. "Benji?" she called, her voice filled with concern and a slight note of panic.

But soon enough a reply came back from somewhere on the floor, slightly muffled: "I'm OK."

She wanted to help him up, but not wanting to accidentally step on him in the dark, she stayed where she was. Skye almost started at the torchlight and footsteps rapidly approaching from the other end of the corridor, but relaxed when it was accompanied by Brandt's call: "Are you alright?"

"I think that was the last of them," Benji replied, blinking into the bright beam of the torch as he worked himself back into a standing position. "But who switched off the lights?"

"They cut the main power. They must have noticed what we were doing," Ethan replied and was almost interrupted by Luther. "The good news is that the upload was finished before the power went down."

"Please don't tell me there's any bad news," Brandt pleaded quietly, but what little hope he had had was crushed that instant.

"The bad news is," Luther continued, "with the power out the elevator is stuck, and it's cutting us off from our exit."

"Maybe we can find the fuse box and turn it back on?" Benji put in, already mentally searching through the schematics he had looked at earlier, thinking where it might most likely be located, when another voice entered the discussion.

"That isn't gonna work. The break they put in is on a different circuit."

There was a moment of stunned silence as they listened to the thick Scottish accent that was not part of their team, but somehow on their radio transmitters, when Luther was the first to recover. "Listen, kid, whoever you are, get off this..."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!" Benji interrupted him. "I know this guy." Then, turning back to the one on the radio, he added: "Neil, how the hell did you get on this frequency?"

"I had a feeling ye'd be coming back, and I was pretty sure ya wasn't alone, besides there's only so many ways to get through that radio shielding..." The young Scot made a pause that was the audible equivalent of a shrug. "Anyway I've always had me stuff on a separate circuit and connected over an up-link with me computer at home, so when the connection broke down, I knew something must be going on."

"And because your computer is on a different circuit, it can't be just a blown fuse or someone messing with the main switchboard," Benji completed the explanation.

"They must have a panic button disconnecting the whole building from the main power line," Luther added unhappily. "It would take hours to find that separation, and most likely even longer to fix it."

"We're never going to get out of here," Brandt sighed, but Benji wasn't giving up just yet.

"Neil, can you access the schematics of the tower?"

"Sure," Sullivan replied readily. "What'd ya need?"

"A way out from the basement, aside from the normal doors," Benji replied, and there was the faint sound of fingers typing on a keyboard in the background, while the young Scot asked: "What's wrong with the doors?"

"Long story," Benji answered.

Obviously Neil shrugged it off, because a second later he replied: "Alright, there's a room, two doors left from the server room, seems to be an old washroom of some kind. Anyway, it should have a grid in the middle, big enough for a person to get through, leading right into the underground pipelines."

"Oh great, a sewer," Luther muttered.

"You're welcome to stay here for the rest of the night" Brandt shot back. "But sewer or not, I'm out of this hell-hole."

"Don't worry, I'm coming," Luther replied, following the others to the room in question and did indeed have a drain in the floor that was just big enough to let them through one by one.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Despite some minor misunderstandings, Neil led them back to the surface somewhere south of Waterloo, near the Themes. On the other side of the river Big Ben was chiming quarter past, as Benji helped Skye up onto the concrete. Night had fallen long since, and the street-lamps of Victoria Embankment were reflected back from the calm, black surface of the water.

A chilly winter wind had come up, and since Skye hand never had the chance to take a jacket, Benji gave her his, laying his arm around her shoulders for good measure. The rain of the morning had turned into snow in the cold of the night, and while the thick flakes immediately melted on the streets, there already was a fine white powder on roofs and trees. Somewhere in the distance a radio was playing "Santa Clause Is Coming" and as Benji breathed in the crisp winter air, feeling the soft, warm weight of Skye leaning against him, and looking through the silky haze over the river at Westminster, he thought the city hadn't looked as beautiful in a long time.

"You got red on you," Skye chided him, tracing a by now unidentifiable stain on his shirt back to his neck until her hand rested on his shoulder. Carefully, Benji bent down and met her forehead with his.

"Now you got red on you, too," he replied. Breathing in her warm scent, he wrapped his arms around her hips, shoving his hands under the too long back of his jacket, and gently pulled her closer. Before they would have kissed, though, they were interrupted.

"So, should we go to the flat now?" Brandt asked. They had finally all managed to scramble out of the gully and now all he wanted was a cup of coffee, a bed and a hot shower, although not necessarily in that order.

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," Benji replied, half easing himself out of Skye's embrace. "After all there's still two dead bodies lying around there."

His girlfriend shot him a questioning glance, but Benji shrugged it off. And looking around, he could see that none of the others were eager to go back to the apartment either.

"Hotel then," Luther decided and set off towards the bridge. Without a comment, everyone followed.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

 **Epilogue**

Benji heard the footsteps come up behind him even before he saw his visitor in the small mirror he had attached to one of the screens. With the IMF back to being the IMF and him mostly in the field, it didn't happen too often that he did actual technician work back in HQ, but if his desk was used by someone else while he wasn't around, the people working in his department made sure it always looked the same when he came back.

This time, however, he did not have to look up to know who was approaching him. He didn't know whether it was his agent training that had sharpened his hearing, but by now he could discern several regular visitors by their footsteps.

"Benji, do you know someone called Neil Sullivan?" Brandt, asked positioning himself in front of his desk to catch the other man's attention. Finally Benji looked away from his work and up at the analyst. "Yeah, he's the Scottish kid we met in London. Pretty smart, and lots of talent."

"He was employed by Clarkson Enterprises, and as such included in the investigation of the CIA," Brandt started explaining. "However it appears that all records they ever had of him, suddenly disappeared completely from the entire network, with no possibility of recovery. You don't happen to have anything to do with that?"

"Did they say so?" Benji carefully asked back, with the most innocent face he could muster.

"No," Brandt replied in a dry, toneless voice.

"Then I guess I don't," Benji answered, a grin twitching around the corners of his mouth. "I told you, he was talented."

 _So, this is it. I hope you had fun with it._

 _Post Fallout edit: Despaire not, there is a new story already in the making and coming soon._

 _Thanks for reading! See you around._


End file.
